NO PLAN TO RAISE MALAYSIAN GOVT RETIREMENT AGE TO 60

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 11 (Bernama) -- The Malaysian government has no plan to
extend the retirement age of civil servants from the current 58 years to 60, the
House of Representatives was told Monday.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Mohamed Nazri Abdul
Aziz said a decision on the matter could only be made after an in-depth study,
including the impact on job opportunities for school leavers and college and
university graduates as well as the human resource demand in certain sectors of
the public service.

"The third factor is the impact on government efforts to rightsize the civil
service. Even if we do not reduce the size of the civil service, the operations
cost of the government would have to be reduced without jeopardising service to
the people.

"Fourthly, the health of the civil servants, particularly those nearing the
retirement age of 58, should be taken into account. Do they have the capacity to
continue working?" he said when replying to a question from Idris Haron, a
member of Parliament.

To a question on whether raising the retirement age could prevent young
employees in the public sector from switching to the private sector, Mohamed
Nazri said this could be overcome through a salary revision by the government
from time to time as well as other incentives to ensure that the public sector
salaries remained competitive.

"For example, the current salaries of graduate officers are better than
those offered by the private sector," he said, adding that other advantages were
the time-based promotion, such as for academics, and promotion based on
expertise such as for lecturers, medical officers and researchers.

Last month, Cuepacs President Omar Osman asked the government to raise the
retirement age from 58 to 60 for the 1.2 million civil servants to match the
practice in some other countries in the region.

He had said that Malaysia was lagging behind countries such as Brunei,
Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand where the retirement age was between 60 and
62.

The retirement age of Malaysian public employees had been raised twice so
far, the first time in 2001, from 55 to 56, and then in 2008, to 58.
Nevertheless, civil servants can opt to retire at age 55 or 56.

-- BERNAMA