Pensioners cannot get enough food or salary

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

A pensioner waits his turn to receive his salary at an Istanbul bank branch. More than 84 percent of Turkish pensioners are dissatisfied with their salaries. DAILY NEWS photo

As European pensioners are fighting for their vested rights during days of austerity across Europe, their counterparts in rapidly-growing Turkey are not living the dolce vita either, with a survey revealing that bread tops their daily diet.

Some 84.44 percent think their salary is not enough to live on, according to the Turkey Pensioners Profile Survey by the Turkish Association of Pensioners. While 73.4 percent of Turkish pensioners live on their salaries alone with no extra income, 28.8 percent receive help from others, largely sons and daughters. The association helps 4 percent of these people.

Money goes to food

Bread, vegetables, fruit, rice and pasta are the top foods that pensioners consume, relatively. Legumes also have an important share in the daily diet, while red meat is consumed the least.

Most pensioners spend a large portion of their salaries on nutrition. Some 14 percent spend all of it on food while 38 percent spend half. Some 73 percent told the survey makers that their salary is not enough to buy the food they need or want and 60 percent received food from their children. Price is the leading criterion of food purchases and over half of respondents were not interested in the healthfulness of the food they consume. However, the remaining pensioners want to consume clean food.

Some 48.7 percent complain about small letters on food labels and 34 percent cannot find suitable food for their special diets.

Around 61.3 percent of Turkish pensioners do not hold a credit card, and 61.3 percent of the remaining pensioners have only one card.

While 67.5 percent of them live in apartments, 27.5 percent live in shanty houses. Only 5 percent live in detached houses and most Turkish pensioners heat their houses with stoves.

Some positive data comes from ownership, showing that 72.9 percent have their own houses while the remainders live in rented houses, though all respondents wanted balconies and elevators.

The most common criterion for housing location is the distance to hospitals, followed by crime rates and traffic jams.

Watching television was the most popular free time activity, followed by praying, reading newspapers, walking and listening to music. Traveling, going to movies or the theater were the least common activities. Some 88.5 percent want the establishment of pensioners’ social clubs.

The survey directly questioned 1,018 female and 2,382 male participants.