Okaz/Saudi Gazette

RIYADH — The Shoura (Consultative) Council has been sleeping over a decade at a proposal to increase the salary of retirees by five percent per annum.

There are about 850,000 Saudi government and private sector retirees who have been anxiously waiting all this time for the increase to be effected so as to enable them face the rising cost of living, the members said.

Fahd Al-Anzi, chairman of the special committee assigned to study the proposal, did not reveal the stance of the committee regarding the proposal but said it had forwarded its report to the council's General Authority a long time ago.

About a decade ago, two members of the council's fourth session proposed the increment to be paid both to civil and military retirees.

They wanted a five percent raise or its equivalent of the recession to be paid annually along with their monthly benefits.

The proposal was tabled by Mohammed Al-Quwaihis and Youssef Al-Maimani whose tenure ended with the end of the council's fifth session.

They were later joined by Mohammed Abu Saq whose term of the council's office continued during the sixth session before his appointment as state minister for the affairs of the council.

After the council's department of consultants had approved the legal and regular soundness of the proposal, it forwarded it to the council's committee on administration and human resources in its capacity as the concerned body.

It took the committee three years to discuss the proposal with the three members before they left the council at the end of their tenure.

Many attempts were made since then to make the council approve the proposal but years have passed without anything being done on the issue.

The proposal has been languishing in the council's drawers for a decade now without any concrete measures to benfit the retirees.