ONE of the ways we can improve our country’s economic standing is by raising the age of retirement in the public service. Let those workers stay a little while longer on the job to make that worthwhile and valuable contribution to the life of the country. It will also mean a few more years of giving back by way of National Insurance Scheme contributions before retirement. These are important aspects of any country working its way along the developmental path. President Ramotar alluded to this thought when he made mention of Guyana becoming a developed country in a recent address to the nation. He was in effect saying that we in the Third World, by adopting and adapting to those modalities of those of the First World nations, can attain developed status. Certainly, it is not an elusive dream, it is attainable, and in our lifetime, so says the President. I wholeheartedly believe it and here is my reason for saying this.
If you take a closer look at the developed world – England, for example, you see the retirement age at 70 years, with the English looking to raise this to 75 years. What the British are saying is do not allow age and experience to go to waste; keep the worker gainfully employed doing what he/she does best. There is a whole lot of wealth and stability for the nation in allowing persons to work on to their full capacity.
Guyana’s retirement age is 55, a time when most workers are young, strong and brimful with experience. Such early retirement means that those workers become dependent on the state by way of pensions, gratuities and NIS refunds soon after. It means that there is an awful lot of money going out of the national treasury when that could have been delayed for another five years. Guyana’s dilemma is further exacerbated when these same workers are re-hired – a situation that is prevalent in Guyana, when they have to be additionally paid a pension, plus that of their month-to- month contract. Won’t it have been easier for them to stay on until age 60, where none of the above paying out of monies would have been necessary?
It may seem a trivial matter, but let us picture the scenario of 100 persons retired in the coming calendar year – 2015. This means that 100 persons have to come under the umbrella of the state in the paying out of various pensions and benefits. If the retirement age was raised to 60 this means that (100×5= 500) 500 more collective years could have been gainfully utilised in useful service as well as NIS contributions.
Let me make mention of what obtains here in St Lucia; and I must say in most CARICOM States: The retirement age is 60 years before one can become eligible for a pension. Well, that was up until 2003, when, upon reaching the age of retirement, you would be given a monthly NIS stipend, minus a pension. In 2003, by an act of parliament, all public servants would only be eligible for a refund of their NIS contributions and not a pension from the Government’s coffers. Government has absolved itself from the task of having to deplete its resources while siphoning off the public servant to subsist on a robust NIS.
On the other hand, neither Guyana’s treasury nor its NIS is so robust, yet they are paying out much more to the worker. Not patterning itself exactly as the St Lucian model, however, we here in Guyana can learn a useful lesson. We can, by easing the heavy duty off the state somewhat in the raising of the retirement age, especially in the light of a higher life expectancy, where many of those retirees would have to be remunerated by the state. Those of our retirees would have been subsisting on monies way past the time that they have worked.
It is time the Finance Minister explore the possibility of raising the retirement age in Guyana. It is a forward and developmental approach to the state attaining developed status.

Neil Adams