Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski met Sunday with pensioners living in a retirement home in Gjorce Petrov and gave them a plasma display TV on the occasion of New Year's and Christmas holidays.

The pensioners voiced their gratitude for the measures taken by the government in an effort to improve their living standards, such as the announced pension hike in 2013, free public transportation and free spa treatment.

They asked existing retirement homes to be overhauled and new ones to be built. "The Alliance of Pensioners' Association urges the national strategy for senior citizens for the period between 2010 and 2020 to be realised as soon as possible since it envisages new retirement facilities to be constructed in Skopje, Kocani, Ohrid and in other cities in Macedonia," its president Dragi Argirovski stated after meeting with Gruevski.