EXTENDING the retirement age of public-sector employees will be beneficial only if there is a genuine shortage of workers in the country or when the general public do not favour working in the public sector or when there are other genuine reasons for extending the service of those currently employed.

At the moment, it does not seem that there is a shortage of people who can be recruited into the public sector.

In fact, there are plenty of unemployed graduates looking for jobs. School-leavers and graduates are aplenty, facing a lack of job opportunities in the private sector.

Soon, another 40,000 graduates will be out from colleges. So, it would seem that raising the retirement age by four years for public-sector employees would deprive many of the younger generation the chance of finding employment.

At present, jobs in the public sector are more secure than jobs in other sectors. Salaries are relatively high, too, and work pressure much less compared with the private sector.

There are also other benefits: bonuses, five-day working week, pensions, etc. In short, the civil service is still very attractive to many job seekers.

Is the country’s economy competitive enough to sustain the large number of government employees in the future? As it is, the salaries and pension payouts are huge and if the economy slows down due to some external factors, this will affect the government’s purse. How productive can the public sector be when the economy is affected?

Many civil servants above the age of 50 should by now be earning quite a sum in salaries and allowances.

Depriving them of another four years of employment with the government (that is, not raising the retirement age) is not going to make much difference.

It is not that the government is not extending the service of those who have reached age 56 if there is a real need to continue to employ them.

In some critical sectors, civil servants are re-employed even up to the age of 65. This is done when there is a need to hire them and the employees are medically fit to continue working. This mode of service extension should be good enough.

In Malaysia, about 4.5 per cent of the population are employed in the public sector. This is quite a large number of civil servants for a population of 26 million.

Let us be fair to the government, to those who are unemployed and seeking jobs in the government sector and also to those hoping to be promoted in the service.

DR M.A. NAIR, Bandar Muadzam Shah

Source: NST – April 29, 2008