by Rod Hughes

It’s a good thing Costa Ricans live a long time, a story in today’s La Nacion shows. They have to, if they appeal the amount of their pensions.

Not only are Costa Rican pensions a mere pittance compared even to the U.S. Social Security, but the creaky administration of the Tico pension system makes getting an adjustment almost impossible. La Nacion profiled the case of a Guanacaste accountant, Luis Javier Sanchez, 76, who has been battling 24 years to get “just a little more” from his monthly pension.

Sanchez worked 30 years for several government agencies when he retired in 1984 from his last job in the Ministry of, ironically, Finance. After getting no answer on his claim right after he received his first check, in 1999 he took the situtation to a Labor Court which found in his favor— last year! Indeed, his retirement benefits had been miscalculated and he is to receive about a third more each month than before.

Now begins Sanchez’s next arduous quest—to get reimbursed for the lack during the past 24 years. May you live to be a 100, Sr. Sanchez. Costa Rica’s Bureau of Pensions still handles paper files despite a promise to computerize 21,800 cases. (The figure would be even higher if it were not for the fact that 36,000 teacher’s pensions were computerized by their pension organization, overseen by the powerful teachers’ unions.)

The Pension Bureau pleads lack of budget to pay the 15 persons they promised to hire to simply take out the staples, eliminate duplicated documents, assign a number and pass the cleaned files into a scanner to put them in the computer. Meanwhile, complaints about slow pensions continue to mount up—1,800 in last December alone. And appeals in the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber must have mounted up to 2,000 just last year alone, estimates Hasel Diaz of the Ombudsman’s Office.