California-based Afghan professor to present plan for retirees

KABUL (Pajhwok): Dr Alam Khan, an Afghan professor at the University of California, the United States, has praised the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA)’s decision not to reduce pension of retired government servants and says he will presents a plan in this regard in future.

The expert said his plan about giving pensions to retired public servants needed creation of a law and a supervisory agency to implement the plan.

Last month, the IEA banned money being deducted from pension of retired government servants and said the pensions of the existing employees should be determined, so that a decision could be made.

In an exclusive interview with Pajhwok Afghan News, Dr Alam Khan justified the decision of the IEA regarding the deduction in pension.

He said the government should implement the decision soon because the retirees faced many problems.

He advised it was useful to pay pensions to all retirees so they could address their problems.

He added: “In Surah An Nisa, Ayah NO. 29 Allah (swt) says: O believers! Do not devour one another’s possessions wrongfully; rather than that, let there be trading by mutual consent. You shall not kill yourselves. Surely Allah is ever Compassionate to you.”

“There are two ways, either do business or if you want to use someone’s wealth so it should be based on the person’s consent. The government has investigated this issue of pension from the Shariah point of view and found out that this affair is against this verse that’s why it was forbidden.”

Pension plan for retirees:

In an exclusive chat with Pajhwok, Dr Alam Khan shared his plan for pension of retirees.

He said: “First, it is required to establish a law for pension pay and form a monitory agency soon, a union of retirees is also necessary in coordination with this agency, and a professional board under it is also needed. Every time the employees’ money is deducted, it will go to certain accounts. If someone can spend it, he can, or leaves it for the organization, it is also a good thing.”

Khan called the issue of retirement important, saying “when a person becomes old and weak, he should have some source of income and establishing sources of income is also confirmed by Islam”.

He said in other countries, governments only made laws and created monitoring bodies to implement them so that justice was ensured.

He said no government had the right to suspend the rights of pensioners.

The expert on economic issues said the past governments in Afghanistan also took care of pensioners, but their approach was not correct.

He recalled the Ministry of Finance would directly deduct money from the salaries of government employees and would give it back to them little by little after retirement.

He said the retirees were denied their stipends when there were wars and economic crises because the government would lack budget.

“The same situation prevails, we have just come out of the war, the government is still having problems, they say they lack m money, otherwise it’s the right of the employees”.

He said basically the government had no right to delay pensioners’ rights and it was better to pay them as soon as possible.

He said the Islamic Emirate had not been able to pay pensioners for almost three year because it lacked money.

He recalled previous governments would delay payment of stipends to pensioners under one or another excuse and would force them into paying bribes.

sa/ma