Mahama Ayariga, the Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, has expressed his resolve to advocate for the extension of the compulsory retirement age for public servants and judicial officers from 60 to 65 years.
According to him, due to the rather belated commencement of school going by most people, it has become imperative to reconsider age of retirement. He further announced his intent to sponsor a private member’s bill to amend the constitution to achieve this objective.
“Many people start family life late and their children are mostly still in school when they are compulsorily retired and family incomes are negatively affected with dire consequences for the education of their children. An extended retirement age will ensure that youth are guaranteed family income to sponsor their education.
“With improved health care and increased life expectancy, the current compulsory retirement age of 60 years hurts the public service and judiciary and denies them of healthy, competent and experienced people. And many of them live an additional twenty years or more and become a burden on the pension scheme which has to support them in retirement when they could actually work”.
The Chief Executive of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, Mr. Hayford Atta Krufi, last year, called for a national dialogue concerning a possible review of the retirement age in the country.
Currently, under the National Pension Act, which provides for both full and partial pension, full pension workers must have attained 60 years of age (55 years if working under hazardous conditions) with at least 180 months (15 years) of contributions.
However, an early pension is also available to workers from the age of 55 years with at least 180 months (15 years) of contributions.
According to Mr. Atta Krufi, Ghana’s retirement age of 60 years could result in losses in the workplace in both human and financial resources. He added that the situation is worsened by the fact that the rate of retirement is not comparable with the rate of hiring.
He therefore advised that, the country starts the conversation on a possible revision of the retirement age to help the nation benefit from the expertise of its well-experienced employees.
Mr. Atta Krufi believes that the implementation of this revision should be phased as we “cannot just do a blanket increase in the pension age”.
“So when you’re having the conversation, it’s not just all of a sudden everybody is going to retire at 64 or 65 or 66, but it is phased. So, those who are born at a certain age will retire at a certain age and then those who are born later will retire at a certain age and then gradually, we will have that increase in retiring age. That is how it was done in Europe and in the UK. And I think that as a nation we need to look at that”.
The NPRA CEO went on to say that its outfit was working tirelessly to tackle issues affecting stakeholders under the current pension scheme adding that “The government is also leaving no stone unturned to resolve all outstanding issues in the implementation of reforms, especially to address retirement benefit challenges under Act 766”.
