Say Goodbye to 60

To date, the government have yet to make a  decision on raising the retirement age of civil servants to 60 years as vociferously clamoured by CUEPACS.

The Human Resources Minister  spoke on this on the sideline of the 5th Apec Human Resources Development Ministerial Conference in Beijing.

To him, no decision has been made even though the matter is at the highest level of deliberation at his Ministry.

He brought out a few cogent points.

Firstly, Malaysia has the biggest civil service in the world. Most of them are teachers.

Secondly, they have just increased the retirement age to 58.

Thirdly, he said they cannot just increase the age willy-nilly. If old people stay on longer, what will happen to young people who wants to get into the civil service?

Meanwhile look at some of the statistics.

Malaysia, which has a population of 26 million, has a public sector workforce of 1.2 million people.

The retirement age for public sector employees in Malaysia was increased from 56 to 58 in 2008 and Cuepacs  had proposed to the government to further raise it to 60 to be on par with other countries in the region.

The retirement age of civil servants in Thailand, Brunei and Indonesia is 60 while in Singapore, it is 62.