“As long as the public service salary adjustment is not implemented, the pension adjustment for public servants cannot be carried out and depends entirely on the government’s discretion with initiatives like the PKKP.
“Therefore, Cuepacs urges the government to promptly make the adjustments to the public services salary scheme instead of waiting until 2025,” Cuepacs president Adnan Mat said in a statement.
He said the government should prioritise this issue as it involves the welfare of approximately 1.6 million serving public servants and over 700,000 pensioners.
On Tuesday, FMT reported that a new salary scheme for civil servants will only be implemented in January 2025, according to the timeline of a review posted on the public services department (JPA) website.
The review of the New Remuneration Scheme, which began in July, will be completed by October next year before being tabled in Parliament for approval together with the 2025 budget.
On June 27, the Federal Court affirmed the Court of Appeal’s decision declaring the Pensions Adjustment (Amendment) Act 2013 (Act A1447) null and void, rendering the amendments no longer applicable to government pensioners.
However, in July, the government decided that the July pension and derivative pension for civil servants who retired before and from 2013 be paid using the original pension amount.
This resulted in pension payments for civil servants who retired before 2013 being restored to the December 2012 amount, while civil servants who retired from 2013 onwards had their pension payments restored to the original amount at the time of retirement.
The difference between the current pension amount and the original figure would continue to be paid in the form of the PKKP to enable the amount received by pensioners to be the same as the one received in June 2023.
Yesterday, JPA director-general Zulkapli Mohamed announced that the PKKP will continue to be given from January to December 2024, for the affected pensioners and derivative pension recipients.
“Previously, the government had decided to implement PKKP payments for the period July 2023 to December 2023 for retirees and pensioners,” he said in a statement.