Akbar Qorbani, the executive secretary of the Workers’ House in the west of Tehran Province, told Destarest News that not paying the government’s commitments on time has put the Social Security Organization in a difficult situation in paying pensions to retirees, disability recipients, and survivors, and has affected the lives of about five million people.

He added that these delays have caused the organization to be unable to pay the claims of pharmacies, laboratories, and medical centers, and have led to repeated protests from providers of medical services.

Qorbani said that, to compensate for the shortage of liquidity, the Social Security Organization has been forced to take out bank loans with high interest rates, and that heavy costs have been imposed on the fund; costs that the government does not compensate.

Destarest News also wrote that the government’s debt should be calculated based on the inflation rate, and that the decline in the value of money over the past years has increased the real amount of this debt by several times. As this outlet wrote, failure to update the government’s commitments is one of the main factors behind the imbalance in the Social Security fund.