Last week, as the yuletide festivities gradually gained momentum, our media space was awash with news of a proposal by the Prof. H. Kwesi Prempeh led Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) to expunge Ghana’s mandatory retirement age of 60 years from the 1992 constitution.
Various news items reported him to have been categorical in saying ‘people should be allowed to do at least 70 years’
Speaking exclusively with TV3’s Kemini Amanor, Prof Prempeh said “Our judges are retiring at 65 and 70 and so why must university lecturers, some of them still very sharp, at 60 years, some of them are actually not even in their prime yet.
So, this is what we are proposing that don’t keep 69 years in the constitution, take it out and then, as and when you need to play with it, it is easier to do it in parliament; you can have a much bigger deliberation around and allow some institutions like universities a bit of a range so they can go up.
Because there are universities, faculties, they retire at 60 and then re-engage them on contract, so everybody knows that it is not working.
Let them work to 70. You don’t use retirement age that way; there is a problem of employment, the 80-year-old who leaves the classroom is not going to be replaced by the guy who is looking for a job, it doesn’t work that way easily.
Look at the issue a bit more holistically. Retirement age has some connections with mobility through the system, but let us not use it as an employment kind of valve.”
Due to population dynamics and other factors like life expectancy, pensions and social security systems, workforce demands, age discrimination laws, and economic conditions, the issue of mandatory retirement age in many countries continues to be a subject of intense debate and that explains why to a large extent the call by the respected Chair of the CRC went viral.
Last year the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) tabled a similar proposal; a proposal to increase the mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65 years and that also expectedly triggered a public debate and commentary.
It is obvious that people are passionate about issues relating to pensions and retirement and so such issues must be addressed dispassionately.
It is against this background that I wish to comment on the proposal by the CRC as a way of my contribution to public discourse on this sensitive matter.
It is an undeniable fact that at the mandatory retirement age of 60, some people are still hale and hearty and are in good shape to contribute a bit more to national development.
Some can even go on and on till they drop dead on the job. Conversely, many others even before age 60 and at 60 are already tired and worn out and are unable to go an extra mile mostly due to health challenges.
Our offices both public and private are replete with stories of instances where people who falsified their dates of birth to stay on beyond the mandatory retirement age of 60 struggle to keep body and soul together with some struggling to endure a routine as mundane as ascending and descending the office staircase.
A cursory look at available statistics indicates that most retirees in Ghana are unable to survive 10 years after their mandatory retirement as many die between ages 60 to70.
The proposal by the CRC therefore means that most people might not even live to fully enjoy their hard-earned pension benefits as they may die on the job.
Remember the current national life expectancy is 65years. Consequently, as a nation we cannot embark on the tortuous journey of saddling our prospective retirees with a workload that would prevent them from enjoying their well-deserved retirement in dignity whilst enjoying the fruits of their hard labour.
Every year, over one hundred thousand (100,000) graduates emerge from our tertiary institutions both public and private encompassing Bachelors, Masters and PhD degree holders with few or no vacancies available to absorb them.
For some time now in this country, it is almost becoming a normalcy for us to have graduates from our tertiary institutions stay at home for 5 years or more without any employment opportunities, not even a glimmer hope of being employed any time soon and that is even graduates, it gets worse with those with lower qualifications who are obviously in the majority.
We are all aware that unemployment, especially youth unemployment in this country is ridiculously high since job creation has not kept pace with the number of job seekers entering the job market every year.
Therefore, keeping even one person beyond the mandatory retirement age of 60 means the tacit prevention of a young person from gaining access to decent employment and for me that is totally unacceptable and must neither be encouraged nor countenanced in any shape or form.
We would continue to admonish the central government to be steadfast in creating decent and sustainable jobs for our young people through industrialization and agriculture/Agribusiness.
The private sector undoubtedly has a key role to play in this regard as the private sector is considered to be the engine of growth of every economy.
I am therefore of the considered opinion that apart from government and the private sector collaborating and working hand in hand to create employment opportunities for our young people, increasing the mandatory retirement age of 60 years would exacerbate the already grueling unemployment situation.
If it has therefore become imperative to take a second look at the mandatory retirement age then I wish to humbly suggest we should rather experiment the idea of introducing early retirement to our working class.
We need to encourage people to go on early retirement and turn their passion into thriving businesses leveraging on government support.
Notwithstanding, those who want to continue working for the country till they reach the mandatory retirement age of 60 should be allowed to do so.
There are many people in active service who are smart with very fantastic solutions and rich ideas.
There are a lot of creative people in active service, people with the ability and capacity to create thriving solutions for society but the limiting factor is money.
Let us carefully analyze this hypothetical situation. When a young graduate gains permanent employment at 25 years and works for the next 25 years, the person can retire at 50 or 55 still very active and basking in good health.
When this person takes his or her retirement benefits which could be quite substantial depending on one’s position/rank, part of that colossal amount could be used to set up their own private enterprise leveraging on an enabling environment deliberately created by government to support this important cause for such businesses to thrive.
The enabling environment could include tax exemptions, tax holidays, utility tariff reliefs, ready market, business incubation ideas, etc.
These businesses which might spring up all over the country would definitely offer employment opportunities to some unemployed graduates thereby reducing the unemployment burden in the process.
Therefore, the state should rather take steps to regularize the system for people who wish to go on early retirement to do so without any encumbrances.
The mandatory retirement age should rather be reduced or slashed to between 50 to 55 years to create more opportunities for the teeming young people who are in urgent and desperate need for jobs, jobs and jobs.
When people retire from active service early, spaces/vacancies and opportunities would be created for our young job seekers. This would obviously stem the tide of rising youth unemployment and reduce youth unemployment drastically.
What matters most in this regard is paying decent pensions and gratuities to workers so that they can be motivated to retire early, take their benefits and figure out what to do with their remaining years.
At 60, not many people are fit enough and have the capacity to make meaningful contributions by way of investments into starting up new businesses because at 60 many are already weak and frail.
Most pensioners at 60 just take their lump sum from the handlers of their pension funds and sink into oblivion, many are even unable to enjoy their pension benefits, they die leaving everything behind.
We must therefore reject the proposal to expunge the mandatory retirement age of 60 from our statute books in its entirety.
It is tricky and not in the overall interest of the country when nearly 50% of our total population is below 25 years of age. There could be a genuine justification to allow some retirees to be asked to stay on due to their accumulated experience such as in academia, medicine, judiciary etc. but there is definitely no justification to push this agenda down the throat of all sectors, it would be inimical to our quest to find a lasting solution to one of the major challenges confronting our dear nation currently – Unemployment.
There should be an exhaustive public dialogue on this proposal for the opinion of the majority to shape the employment policy based on the exigencies of the times.
The current levels of unemployment in the country which by all intents and purposes would continue to balloon and exacerbate year after year requires that we take urgent steps to address the challenge head on.
Extending the mandatory retirement age even by a day would largely be counterproductive and must be rejected in its entirety and must be treated with all the contempt and disdain it deserves. The youth of this country deserve better; we cannot continue to toy with their future.
May God bless our homeland Ghana and make us great and strong.
Dr. Felix Kwame Quainoo 0244998919/0207744933 feelimax@yahoo.co.uk
The writer is a freelancer from Aboso in the Prestea Huni Valley Municipality of the Western Region.
