Battle to Survive in Congo Republic as Wages, Pensions Stop
- Citizens go months without payment as nation awaits IMF deal
- Oil-producer’s economy last year contracted most since 1994
Photographer: Federico Scoppa/AFP via Getty Images
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If it wasn’t for two sons in France sending money, pensioner George Kimbembe says he’d have joined the ranks of the dead in the Republic of Congo’s capital, Brazzaville.
That foreign cash is a lifeline for the 76-year-old former civil servant who hasn’t received his pension for 13 months. It’s a shortfall emblematic of a fiscal crisis engulfing the oil-producing central African country that was battered by lower crude prices, owes creditors more than $9 billion and is seeking an International Monetary Fund bailout.