Legal Insurance Information No. (235)
The Social Security Corporation realized that the amended law proposed by it would not be issued anytime soon, and that the date for the annual increase for Social Security retirees, known as the inflation increase, may come before the issuance of the proposed amended law, which included changes to the mechanism for granting the annual increase.
From this standpoint, it seems that the institution saw the easy way to avoid repeating the meager increases granted to retirees over the past two years, by taking advantage of the continued implementation of the Defense Law, and recommending to the Prime Minister a draft new Defense Order on the subject of the annual increase in the salaries of Social Security retirees, without realizing that it was implicating the President in a grave error..!
Article (90) of the Social Security Law linked retirement and disability pensions to inflation or the annual growth rate of average wages, whichever is lower, and not to exceed twenty dinars, and that the increase be in May of each year, and be distributed equally to those entitled to it, regardless of the value of the retirement pension.
The law exempted from the increase the recipient of an early retirement pension and the recipient of a partial disability pension due to injury who have not reached the age of sixty for men and fifty-five for women.
In my opinion, the defense order that the Prime Minister may issue in this regard will freeze the increase mechanism stipulated above, and will replace it with another mechanism for the current year only, that is, for the month of next May. The same mechanism proposed by the Social Security in the upcoming legal amendments may be the same, which is to take the average inflation rate and the growth rate in wages and adopt this average for the annual increase, and the total cost of the increase is calculated and then distributed equally to everyone, and to include those with early salaries of less than 1,000 dinars. However, the Social Security statements indicated that the proposed defense order will stipulate the inclusion of early retirement salaries of less than 300 dinars only.
In any case, issuing a defense order on such a matter constitutes an encroachment by the Prime Minister on the powers granted to him, which are limited to the necessities of confronting the Corona pandemic and dealing with its repercussions. This matter has absolutely no relation to the pandemic, which makes the issuance of any defense order in this regard absolutely invalid and implicates the President in a matter outside his powers and responsibilities.