Call on government to keep abreast with changing times and raise the retirement age for civil servants to 60 years

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Media Comment at the "New Deal For Mother-Tongue Education in Eighth Malaysia Plan - Tamil Education" Roundtable Conference 
by Lim Kit Siang

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DAP calls on the government to keep abreast with changing times and raise the retirement age for civil servants to 60 years.

The  Barisan Alternative in its common manifesto, Towards A Just Malaysia, had proposed increasing the retirement age to 60 years for the public sector consistent with the improvement of health and life span.

The arguments for raising  the retirement age of civil servants  to 60 include: 

• the present retirement age of 55 is relatively a young age and the experience of the officers  should not go to waste and they should be retained for a longer period.

• a better life expectancy (72 years for women and 69 for men) and improved health facilities available allowed employees in general to work beyond 55. At 55 years, people are not only physically fit and mentally alert but are at the prime of their working lives.

• the retirement age for civil servants in most other countries had been increased in the past  decade. Civil servants in Scandinavian countries retire at 67 and at 62 in the United States. The retirement age in Asian countries have also been raised: Singapore (62), Thailand (60) and India (58).

• the retirement age of 55 was introduced in the colonial times by the British in the 1950s.

• Ever since independence, the Constitution provides that the compulsory retirement age for  judges is 65. If judges can function effectively up to the age of 65 there is no reason why civil servants cannot do so up to the age of 60.