Raising the retirement age for women will be painless: President Nazarbayev

Raising the retirement age for women [from the current 58 to 63] from 2018 will be painless, KazTag reports, citing President Nazarbayev as saying June 24 when meeting workers of the Pavlodar-based Neftekhim Ltd., a chemicals producing company. He elaborated that “changing of the country’s pension system is a necessary step needed to secure further development of Kazakhstan”. “I believe if we raise the retirement age starting from 2018, we will take into account interests of those approaching the retirement age now”. “We have to raise the retirement age not because of malicious will, but because the life forces us to (…) Let’s have a look at the so-called West reforming its pension legislation, with all the social tension, rioting (…) Some Western countries used to live on credit and pay retirement allowances through borrowing (…) now they have to cut down retirement allowances and raise the retirement age to 70. If we don’t raise the retirement age now, we will face similar problems later on”. According to him, “by 2030 there will be one retired person for every 1.5 working people, with the ration reaching 1 to 1 further on (…) someone has to work to sustain the retired”.