30,000 youth to suffer as KP plans raising retirement age

PESHAWAR: The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial government has deprived at least 30,000 educated youth of the government jobs in the next three years instead making any plan to provide them more jobs. It will definitely result in increase in the ratio of jobless people in the province during this period. The KP cabinet has approved three-year extension in retirement age of thegovernment employees, and now those retiring at the age of 60 would be given retirement at the age of 63 years. According to official estimates, every year about 10,000 people are retired. In this scenario, 30,000 government employees are not going to retire in the next three years, thus depriving the young educated people of opportunities to get employed in the government departments.

The decision would also create problems in promotion of government employees. While nearing retirement age, the government employees draw maximum salaries, and the new entrants are hired for lesser salaries.

The PTI manifesto promises more jobs for the youth, but the provincial cabinet decision is going to deprive the youth of routine government jobs.

Earlier, to a KP proposal, the federal government had informed the province that the retirement age issue was for the provinces to decide under the Civil Servants Act 1973. KP Finance Secretary Shakil Qadir informed this correspondent that the provincial cabinet has approved amendments to the Section 13 of the Act to fix the retirement age at 63. However, this amendment would be subject to approval by the provincial assembly.

He said the youth would not be affected much by this change as the government sector provided 7 per cent jobs while the private sector 93 per cent. He said 10,000 government employees retire every year who get Rs24 billion in pension and other arrears.

He maintained that by raising the retirement age, Rs72 billion would be saved while the government would be able to generate more job opportunities by investing the saved sum in other sectors. He said 22,000 new jobs would be created in the next budget, adding there are 6.4 million employees out of which only 513,000 serve the government.