Pensioners lobby for retirement age review

F

ormer public service workers under Public Pensioners Forum (PPF) have proposed lowering of the mandatory retirement age for civil servants from 60 to 50 years to improve efficiency and create space for qualified youths.

Speaking in an interview after a press conference in Blantyre yesterday, PPF board chairperson Dyson Mupite said most employees become less productive after turning 50.

He said most of the pensioners who retired after 2020 are yet to get their gratuities and attributed the delay to inefficiency due to the age of most directors and deputy directors in government.

Mupite said reducing the mandatory retirement age to 50 would also give opportunity to jobless young Malawians.

He said: “Some of the directors and deputy directors in the civil service are over 50 years and are not as productive as they were in their 40s. They are contributing to the challenges most pensioners are facing to access their pensions and gratuities.

“So, what we are saying is let’s revise civil servants’ mandatory retirement age from 60 to 50 years to enable young and energetic Malawians to take over some of these positions in government.”

The group also bemoaned government’s delays to regularise a 400 percent upward revision for monthly pensions of pensioners who retired prior to 2005, saying only 200 percent was effected.

On her part, PPF board of trustee Chimwemwe Phaiya, who retired in 2020, but is yet to receive her gratuity expressed anger for failing to access her gratuity after serving as a primary education adviser (PEA) for several years.

She said some pensioners have been forced to go into huge debts while following up their gratuities at Capital Hill in Lilongwe.

In an interview, Youth and Society executive director Charles Kajoloweka backed the pensioners’ proposal to revise the mandatory retirement age, saying this is what his organisation has been advocating for.

“This is a matter worth national debate. As a country, we really need to pay attention to that suggestion,” he said.

Despite the challenges pensioners are facing, in the 2024/25 financial year the government allocated about K193.17 billion for the pensions and gratuities.

Between financial years 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24, the Treasury allocated about K464 billion to pensions and gratuities for the retiring civil servants