A PORT Glasgow mum has told the Tele how she feels that she has been cheated out of her retirement by controversial pension rule changes.

Marie Howie, 63, is a member of the local group WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequality) who are campaigning against the government.

The council worker took early retirement at 50, unaware that she would have to wait a further 16 years to get her state pension.

She is part of a campaign fighting against the way that the 1995 and 2011 pension acts were implemented.​

Marie said: “All my plans have gone up in the air and we’ve been forced to eat into our savings.

“In August 2009 I met a former colleague and asked her if she’d retired and she told me she wouldn’t be able to because the pension age had moved and she was older than me.

“If I hadn’t met her, I wouldn’t have known anything about it.

“I called the DWP and they wrote me a letter saying ‘thank you for asking for your pension forecast’, and I was told it had been moved until 2019.

“I was flabbergasted.”

Marie, who has three grown-up children, says the government pushed changes through without giving women any warning.

She said: “One of my very good friends is nine months older than me and she collected her pension last July but it will be two years and 10 months before I get mine.

“Some women have been phoning the DWP before they turn 60 to be told they will have to work until they’re 66.”

Marie says she would never have taken early retirement from her job as senior supervisor in the council’s cleaning and janitorial department if she had known what lay ahead.

Marie said: “My department was being reorganised and I had been in that job for quite a while. I would have gone to another department.

“If they can do a u-turn on national insurance for self-employed people, why can’t they do something for people affected by the pension age increase?”

Marie says she and husband Sam have now had to curtail their plans for the future.

She said: “We were hoping to buy a wee flat abroad and stay there for a few months in the winter.

“Now I’m reliant on my husband.

“I like to have a bit of independence but I only have a small works pension.

“Sam works in the oil and petrochemical industry and he will have to work on for a few years to compensate for me.

“I don’t think he should have to. He’s been working since he was 15 and so have I.

“I feel very bitter towards the government.”

If you have been affected by the pension changes you can find the WASPI pressure group on Facebook and sign up to get involved in the campaign.