Longtime civil servants in Armenia, afraid of losing their fat pensions, are applying for early retirement in record numbers.

Especially hit hard are the prosecutor’s office, the Special Investigative Service, and the Investigative Committee.

Recent laws state that those prosecutors with at least twenty years’ service can apply for retirement from July 2014 until July 2017 if they are not older than 65.

The prosecutors don’t want to lose out, convinced that whatever method is used to calculate pension amounts after July 2017 will result in smaller numbers.

Civil servants in the abovementioned agencies that do not apply for retirement before the deadline will not be able to reapply for the higher pensions.

In 2013-2014, 97 prosecutors, out of the 139 eligible, applied for early retirement and were let go.

The 97 were paid some 216.5 million AMD in final wages and receive 38.3 million in pensions per month.

They were replaced by 97 new prosecutors who get paid, on average, 58.2 million AMD monthly.

The Special Investigative Service (SIS) and the Investigative Committee are in the same boat.

In 2013-2014, three of out the eight employees eligible for pensions at the SIS under the conditions noted above, applied and were let go.

The three received a total of 7.6 million AMD in final wages and receive 1.2 million AMD every month.

The three civil servants that replaced them receive, in total, 1.7 million in wages.

The government is so concerned that it has introduced bills in the parliament to amend the above laws.

For example, one bill wants to remove the July 2017 deadline from the law in order to avoid a mass civil servant exodus and greater pension allocations.

Photo: genproc.am