Retirement age can now be amended

Oct 23, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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If the President of Guyana can appoint an octogenarian as the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission, he can damn well extend the retirement age of public servants to 60 years of age.
The person appointed by the President is said to be 84 years old. The opposition has not made age an issue but the media has been quick to point out some issues relating to age. First, the appointee is 84 years old. By the time the next election comes around he is going to be 87. In 2025, he will be 92 years old.
The only way he can be removed from the job if is a tribunal appointed by the President’s adjudges him to be senile or guilty of grave misconduct.
Since the tribunal has to be appointed by the President, if that same President is the same person who appointed the Chairman, he can very well decide not to appoint the investigative tribunal. The other option is for the Chairman to demit office via retirement. The problem therefore is that Guyana can be stuck with an aging Chairman of GECOM for a very long time.
This is quite unlike the situation which exists in the public service where tenured public servants are required to retire at the age of 55 years. Many of them are still in their prime and feel that they have many more productive years ahead. So why not extend the retirement age of public servants to make it consistent with that of judges.
Judges enjoy an advantage over public servants when it comes to the age of retirement. Judges are usually allowed to retire at 65 years of age. What is wrong with extending the age of retirement of public servants to that age or even to sixty at which time, the public servants would be able to enjoy NIS benefits.
As things now stand, a public servant or a teacher retiring at the age of 55 has to wait another five years before enjoying NIS pension. These are the difficult years for retired teachers and public servants. They cannot risk finding a job which pays less than what they got when they retired since the NIS pension is paid on the average salary of the last five years of employment.
So if after retirement at age 55, you take a pay cut in a new job, it means that when you are 60 and due for NIS pension, your pension will be based on your post retirement wages which would have been less than your retirement.
The government should  therefore extend the retirement age to 6o years since this will mean that a person retiring will automatically enjoy an NIS pension and only has to wait another five years for the old age pension.
The second thing pointed out by the media is that this decision of the President contradicts the government’s age policy. But one has to ask whether there was indeed an age policy or whether that was just a ruse to get rid of Justice Prem Persaud as Chairman of the Public Utilities Commission and Justice Cecil Kennard who was Chairman of the Police Complaints Authority.
It was only after persons began to question how it was that someone who was older than both of these gentlemen, octogenarian Hamilton Green, that the government decided to remove him from Chairmanship of the Central Housing and Planning Authority(CHPA) Board. If the glaring contradiction was not pointed out, Hammie would have still been working today at the CHPA.   If the government had a consistent age policy, it would have removed all persons who were either 80 or older in one swipe rather than being pressured to apply it to Hammie.
A strong case now exists for public servants and teachers to press for the extension of the age of retirement. The government can no longer claim that its wants to give young people a chance. The President did not find 18 persons, all of whom are younger than Justice James Patterson, as fit and proper for the position of Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission. So what chance are young people being given? What is the average age of Cabinet? It has to be over 60 years old.
The more compelling argument, however, is that if at 84 a person can be acting as a legal adviser to the Attorney General and then appointed as Chairman of GECOM, then what is wrong with a public servant or a teacher working to age 60 within the public service. What is wrong with allowing policemen and policewomen to retire at 60? Why cannot an army officer retire at 60 also?
The President has set an important precedent. He has shown confidence in an 84 year old handling the rigors of running Guyana’s election machinery. Similar confidence should be shown in teachers, policemen, nurses, military officers and other public servants.
If Justice James Patterson can do it, so can others. Change the retirement age to 60 from tomorrow.

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