Higher retirement age

The traditional state sector role as the biggest employer is in for a cut-back with the down-sizing of the government so that a cap is automatically put on fresh recruitment. In that context, whatever reservoir of skilled, experienced and seasoned bureaucracy we have needs to be optimally utilised. If government officials were to superannuate later, let's say by three years, we could more than stay the course in a difficult, complex and challenging world. We have to compete man-to-man in an increasingly demanding knowledge-based global society. Speaking of being selective there, the option for compulsory or voluntary retirement remains.

In normal circumstances, how do we prematurely retire a government servant? The resource-constrained state has invested in him or her through his or her long career; training the incumbent up on the job or through higher studies abroad or otherwise giving him global exposure. Just when he or she has reached the height of maturity and acquired diverse experience, with a lot of fight still left in him or her, we rather foolishly see the back of the person.

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The national longevity is sixty plus now. A radical improvement in access to modern medicare facilities, topped off by a growing health consciousness on the part of educated people in particular, has increased their energetic life-span. And with experience and skill as the icing on the cake, we have a whole feisty generation waiting to be harnessed at a time when we need their services the most. The argument that relaxing the age limit will block promotion prospects for mid-level officials cannot wash; because they, too, will be the beneficiary of the upward age revision.

Throughout the world the trend is now towards raising the superannuation age so as to blend energy with experience for a maximisation of human resource utilisation. Why should we be an exception?

However, if the age limit is raised, at the end of the day, we might well have a residual genre of officials at the very top, who were recruited with a political slant and not entirely on merit. But that is a calculated risk we have to take for the long-term good.

But what we fail to understand is the mixing up of retirement age with abolition of contractual appointment. The disappearing line between the private sector and the state one, calls for the former to co-opt into the latter, if only on a selective basis.

We are for a consultative process invigorating the government and governance.