Groehling: SaS Launches Petition to Save Second Pillar (2)

Bratislava, April 29 (TASR) - The opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) has launched a petition to save the second (capitalisation) pillar of the pension system, SaS leader Branislav Groehling told a news conference on Monday, citing worries that the government might interfere with it again as the reason behind the move. If the petition obtains 100,000 signatures, Parliament will have to deal with it, said Groehling, reacting in this way to a statement by Finance Minister Ladislav Kamenicky (Smer-SD), who didn't rule out revising the second pillar. "As many as 1.8 million people in Slovakia save money within the second pillar, and the government of Smer-SD is doing its utmost to ensure that this pension will be as bad as it can be for Slovaks," stated Groehling, adding that the government has reduced the contribution to the second pillar from 5.5 percent to 4 percent. Groehling pointed out that Smer-SD governments have repeatedly withdrawn money from Slovaks' pension savings in the past. According to him, the second pillar was revised four times in the past [savers were allowed to quit it - ed.note], and the state gained a total of €1.1 billion thanks to this. He also sees a big problem in transferring this money from profitable to unprofitable funds, which happened under Smer-SD's government in 2013. Labour Minister Erik Tomas (Voice-SD) on TA3's discussion programme on Sunday (April 28) said that the government isn't preparing any changes that would deprive people of their savings in the second pension pillar and that it doesn't plan any further cuts in the contributions that they pay into this type of saving. ko/df