Prague, June 23 (CTK) – Czech President Milos Zeman signed the bill introducing earlier retirement of miners into law yesterday, along with several other government-sponsored bills, his spokesman Jiri Ovcacek has said.
The earlier age at retirement concerns miners who have worked 3300 shifts in an underground coal mine or 2200 shifts in a uranium mine. At present, Czech men retire at about 63 years, while the age limit is postponed by two months each year. The miners will retire seven years sooner than the rest.
The new rules will take effect in October.
Jaromir Pytlik, leader of the Czech trade union of miners, appreciated it that the bill has been signed into law.
The government proposed that miners retire five years earlier than others and parliament increased this to seven years.
Pytlik said the law brings the Czech Republic closer to Europe, but the situation still is not ideal. He said he would welcome it if miners could leave after 25 years of work, like in Poland. However, he said he does not expect this to be discussed soon.
“Heavy industry and other demanding fields have not been solved in our country. When we return to miners again, it is likely that there will be no underground mines in the country anymore,” Pytlik said.
Underground mines are now mainly operated in the Moravia-Silesia Region, managed by the OKD company. However, OKD is facing insolvency proceedigs and it wants to close two mines in the next two years, Paskov and Lazy.
Uranium is mined underground by the Diamo state-controlled company near Dolni Rozinka, south Moravia, but the mine will be closed at the end of the year.
Yesterday, Zeman also signed a bill that empowers the government to raise pensions beyond the indexation rules if their regular rise were too low. The government can decide to raise pensions by up to 2.7 percent, according to the law.
The cabinet originally proposed a maximum increase by 1.7 percent, but the Social Democrats (CSSD) pushed through a higher limit.
Ovcacek said Zeman signed an amendment to the law on firearms that introduces stricter rules for the owners of legal guns and gives the police the right to seize a legal firearm from its owner in the person’s home. The change was initiated by the government in reaction to a shooting tragedy that occurred last year. An elderly man with psychological troubles shot dead eight people in a randomly chosen pub in his home town in February 2015.
Another bill signed by the president yesterday raises maximum fines for some misdemeanours. If anybody offends a police officer or public official, they may be fined up to 10,000 crowns for breach of order under the new law.
The maximum fine for thwarting, marring or threatening the provision of health service raises ten times to 100,000 crowns, same as the fine for running business without a licence.
The fine imposed on people for giving wrong or incomplete data to authorities or withholding the requested data for their own benefit rises from 10,000 to 50,000 crowns. The same increase concerns the fines for causing damage to other people’s property, unauthorised use of such property and the appropriation of things by their finder.
($1=23.976 crowns)
