76.6 percent of those consulted by the Pulso Ciudadano firm said they agree or strongly agree with changing the retirement system, while 9.4 said the opposite, and 14 did not express a clear opinion on the matter.

Furthermore, 52.6 percent of respondents rated the AFP’s performance as bad or very bad, 34.6 evaluated it as average and only 12.7 approved it.

The survey was published after the Chamber of Deputies approved legislation on the Executive’s project, which passed to the Senate, where it will be reviewed by the Labor and Finance committees before being submitted to a plenary vote.

The pension model in Chile was created in 1980, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990. There are currently more than 11.6 million members of the seven existing AFPs, which profit from the savings of the workers and pay meager pensions.

The bill advocates creating a mixed system that allows for increased withdrawals, 72 percent of which are below the minimum wage and a quarter are below the poverty line.

The initiative also proposes that half of the additional six percent that employers must contribute to the retirement fund goes to the workers’ private accounts and the rest to a solidarity mechanism in order to increase the most precarious retirements as soon as possible.

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