SRC Final Decision On Teachers Retirement Age. The difficulty surrounding the proposal to decrease the retirement age for teachers and civil servants to 55 years old has been addressed by the Salaries and Remunerations Commission (SRC) in a clear and concise manner.
According to the constitution, public employees and teachers must retire at age sixty, while people with disabilities must retire at age sixty-five.
Despite this, a legislative proposal was recently presented to parliament to lower the mandatory retirement age for all workers to 55 years of age.
The proponents of the idea maintain that the goal of lowering the retirement age is to increase the number of young people who have access to employment opportunities and professional growth in the service industry.
However, the proposal has been received with a different view from SRC chairperson Lyn Mengich .
Speaking on this matter, Mengich says that the country’s mandatory retirement age should remain at 60 years.
SRC Final Decision On Teachers Retirement Age
The SRC boss argued that lowering the retirement age would force the country taxpayers to carry a higher pension liability, which means that there would be more people on pension demanding payments.
Addressing the matter on Spice FM, Mengich said that the country needs to look at common trend worldwide so as to benchmark .
The matter arise following proposal on Public Service Commission(Amendment) Bill, 2023 that is seeking to reduce the retirement age to 55 years.
She noted that there are even other countries where there is no retirement age.
She further said that if people retire at 55 years, it means that they are pensionable at 55 years and in the state, these are people who are still productive and effectively contribute growth of the economy.
The CEO of SRC also contended that it would be extremely unfeasible to fire productive workers at a relatively young age because they still have fantastic experience leading the state’s workforce.
In 2009, the government changed the retirement age from 55 to 60 years old. This meant that employees with varying disabilities would have an additional five years of service.
The government was having trouble paying for a significant pension debt as a result of multiple people retiring from service, which was the stated reason for the review and subsequent rise of the retirement age.
The proposal to change the retirement age may not see the light of day given the strong resistance from the SRC, the body that sets salaries for public employees such as teachers.
SRC Final Decision On Teachers Retirement Age