{Rabat – Thousands of Moroccans demonstrated on Sunday in the capital Rabat to protest against a new law raising the retirement age from 60 to 63 for public sector employees.
\n}<\/p>\n
The law to reform state pensions, passed by a majority vote of 70 to 35 on Wednesday, stipulates that the change will be introduced gradually from next year.<\/p>\n
Trade unions had mobilised since January in an attempt to counter pension reform, arguing that salaries would fall sharply by 20-40% when the new retirement age comes into effect.<\/p>\n
But the government has pressed ahead with the plan amid reports that the state pension fund is on the brink of collapse with debts of more than 629 billion dirhams ($56bn).<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the protesters gathered in central Rabat before marching towards parliament, chanting “Freedom, dignity, social justice!” an AFP correspondent said.<\/p>\n
The demonstrators called on the authorities to revoke the law which they said would undermine state pension funds.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane admitted on Thursday that the new law “is difficult”.<\/p>\n
“I thank the Moroccan people for understanding the need for this law which is in their interest, although it is a difficult one, and I admit that,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Rabat – Thousands of Moroccans demonstrated on Sunday in the capital Rabat to protest against a new law raising the retirement age from 60 to 63 for public sector employees. } The law to reform state pensions, passed by a majority vote of 70 to 35 on Wednesday, stipulates that the change will be introduced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27194"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27194"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}