Public Service
Retirement age may rise by 2 years
Cabinet sits tomorrow to consider proposal
A proposal for extending retirement age of public servants by two years may be placed before the cabinet for approval tomorrow.
If the proposal gets through, the new retirement age of 59 may take effect from January 1 next year.
The proposal had got the nod at a recent meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair, an official of the Cabinet Division told The Daily Star yesterday wishing anonymity.
The Division had not yet received any document on the proposal but the public administration ministry may send it to the Division today or tomorrow. In that case, the proposal may be placed in the cabinet meeting as a supplementary agenda, said the official.
Public Service Retirement Age Act 1974 has to be amended for raising the age limit, clarifying when it would take effect, and whether those already gone into leave preparatory to retirement would get the benefit.
Experts and economists, however, have given mixed reaction to the government move.
Many experts said it is a good initiative if retirement age in other countries, and average life expectancy and work capability of Bangladeshis are taken into consideration. But some problems may arise in the first two years of its enforcement.
Retirement age of public servants was fixed at 57 after the country’s independence when average life expectancy was 46 years. Civil servants have long been demanding extension of their retirement age as the average life expectancy has gone up to 67 years. However, the retirement age of judges is 67 years, while it is 65 years for teachers.
The retirement age of public servants is 62 years in India, Pakistan and the USA, and it is 65 years in the UK.
Akbar Ali Khan, former finance adviser to a caretaker government, said there are good and bad sides of extending the retirement age of public servants.
It is a good move considering the improvement in people’s average life expectancy and health status.
However, it will squeeze scope for new recruitment and promotion in public services, he said.
M Hafizuddin Khan, another former adviser to a caretaker government, welcomed the move and said, “When we were in the caretaker government, we took such initiative but that could not be materialised.”
It would benefit the state that would get more service from its experienced employees, he said.
The former adviser said it will not create obstacle to fresh recruitments in public services as the size of the administrative machinery has got bigger with the rise in population.
Zaid Bakht of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies said he sees no reason why retirement age of public servants cannot be extended considering that judges and teachers already saw an increase in their retirement age.
He said some problems may arise in the first couple of years in case of fresh recruitment, but those would go away. The extension of retirement age could put a little pressure on the revenue budget for increase of salaries of employees at the higher echelon.
A high official of the public administration ministry said the number of government employees is more than 10 lakh. Nearly 50,000 to 60,000 government staff go into retirement every year, while about 45,000 fresh recruitments are made a year.
About one lakh appointments, including 38,000 primary school teachers, have been made this year. The number of recruitments may be less next year, added the official.
The government has long been considering extension of retirement age of public servants, and there have been strong lobbies for and against the move.
-With The Daily Star input
