Dear Editor,
Those who should be concerned would wish to know that in a conversation on Dr Grantley Walrond’s ‘Spotlight’ on Thursday, June 19, 2014, the interviewees, Dr Pat Francis and Dr Mellissa Ifill of the University of Guyana, revealed they welcomed the news that the administration had approved raising the retirement age of lecturers (and presumably other categories of staff) from sixty years to sixty-five years.
This equals the retirement age of employees at the Guyana Power and Light (GPL), and is an improvement on the current 60-year limit applicable in such institutions as GuySuCo, GGMC, GRA, Audit Office of Guyana, and several, if not all, public corporate entities, not to mention all private sector organisations.
In the Public Service of Guyana, the proportion of working pensioners, as well as over-aged contracted employees, is by no means insignificant, including the highest levels of public servants.
How then does the argument against at least matching the sixty-year retirement age continue to hold? One would have thought that from the perspective of those other public servants, recently denied immediate hope of a pay increase; and that of related unions, the case of discrimination against them would have been demonstrably made.
Except that they may need the help of (negligent) leaders to pursue it.
Yours faithfully,
E B John
