As reported on this site, pensioners have suffered drastic cuts in their pensions. When the news first began to filter out, there was some speculation that President Saparmurat Niyazov was sitting back to see how the policy would play out. On Thursday, however, Niyazov formally announced the news in a Cabinet meeting. The Reuters report follows in full:

Turkmenistan’s leader ordered big cuts in state pensions in his Central Asian country on Thursday, a move that could rob many elderly people of their sole source of income.
Pensioners in Turkmenistan, an authoritarian state rich in gas reserves that borders Iran and the Caspian Sea, have faced either much smaller pension payments or no allowance at all since the beginning of the year.
Many pensioners were told it was part of a new reform that sought to eliminate a “mistake” in the previous pension scheme and had hoped it was a temporary measure.
But on Thursday President Saparmurat Niyazov, who has populated the capital Ashgabat with golden statues of himself, urged his government to go ahead with the plan and “achieve order in the pension system”, state news agency Turkmen Khabarlary said.
Under the measure, the average $60 state pension in the country of six million people was cut by 20 percent.
Women who worked less than 20 years in Turkmenistan and men who worked for less than 25 years have been receiving no pension at all, a move that affects many non-Turkmen former Soviet citizens sent to the republic for work.
“I am shocked and confused. I don’t know what to do and how to support myself from now on,” said one elderly woman who lives on her own in Ashgabat.
Niyazov last year threatened to close all hospitals outside the capital and the authorities have started cutting staff at regional clinics. The government has also started closing provincial libraries.
Turkmenistan lies on some of the world’s biggest gas fields and has the smallest population among the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

As Deutsche Welle reported, Niyazov opened the meeting by revealing the findings of a report presented to him by the Minister for Social Security:

- The scale of wages has been inflated since Soviet times, a legacy that Turkmenistan has been burdened with.
- Over 70% of the able-bodied population received a salary on the basis of factors that have no legal basis.
- The payments of pensions should be stopped until such time as the pension system has been revised to bring it in line with the rate real wages.
- If the Ministry of Social Services work quickly over the next two months the provision of pensions will be able to resume.

Niyazov also expressed his own views on what he perceives to be inadequacies in the pension system. He began on the pensions to collective farm workers, recalling how in the Soviet Union, when entire families worked on the farm pensions were paid only to the head of the family. Accordingly, the pension in question was inflated, which Niyazov described as illegal. Niyazov proposed that collective farm workers should be paid only on evidence of 20 years work experience for women and 25 years for men. However, he stipulated that the time would based exclusively on real working time, thereby excluding leave, holidays, sick leave and maternity leave. The workers at the Ministry of Social Security are also being expected to recalculate working seniority of collective farm workers to account for the five months of winter a year in which they do not work.
Niyazov also wondered why individual farmers were being paid pensions at all and issued instructions for pensions to this category to be halted altogether.

MORE DETAILS ON NIYAZOV’S CABINET ANNOUNCEMENT TO FOLLOW

Itar-Tass also carried a detailed report, carried in full below:

The number of pensioners in Turkmenistan decreased by over 100,000 people due to a pension reform which began on January 1. Many others had their pensions cut.
“We had 336 thousand pensioners last year, and after the revision there remained another 229,000. We should not have paid them,” Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov was shown on television on Thursday as telling a government meeting a day before.
Deputy Prime Minister Djumaniyaz Annaorazov and Social Security Minister Bibitach Vekilov reported to the government on the pension reform.
The deputy prime minister said the government had examined pension documents and exposed that in rural areas pensions were higher because of improper document turnover.
“It was found out that pensions have to be cut to some categories of citizens, while pensions to others should be suspended”, Annaorazov said.
He also said the 1.2 coefficient in calculating pensions has been dropped.
Niyazov ordered the establishment of strict control over pension amounts.
“District and regional services are only throwing money around,” he said.
The president also said financially self-supporting enterprises will from now on pay sick leave out of their profits, while budget-financed organizations will do so from their wage fund. Previously, sick leave was paid from the budget, but Niyazov said that “not everything should be a burden on the state”.
Pensions in Turkmenistan range from 200,000 to 2.2 million mantas (from $10 to $90). In January many pensioners were paid from 200 to 500 thousand manats less. Those who received less than 500,000 were not paid at all. No explanations have yet been forthcoming in the Turkmen media.