Unhealthy population and retirement age

THE EDITOR: Unless actuarial studies show our working population to be healthy and longevity projected to be 80-90, retirement age should not be increased beyond 60 years.

When the Chinese Mandarin retired after a successful government career, he was not supposed to lead a life of leisure. He was supposed instead to take up other but more productive work, calligraphy and painting, music and writing. And the justification of these activities was above all their social contribution; in the Confucian social ethic, these pursuits were necessary to maintain the social harmony on which all else depends.

Retirement should be a time during which people enjoy other pursuits but free of economic and mental worry.

The great historian Edward Gibbon had spent 33 years writing the history of the world. He was so tremendously happy for those 33 years that it is said he didn’t age. He remained exactly the same, as if time never passed, as if time had stopped.

This is how retirement should be. Politics of government bureaucracy is an iron cage and a dehumanising environment, and many fall victim to chronic non-communicable diseases from their mid-thirties onward. Many die within five years of retirement and there are cases, too, of others who never live to see retirement.

The People's Partnership through minister Fazal Karim had promoted a policy of retirees returning to work. This was an immediate attraction but it was an ill-conceived policy that could have manifested as a disaster.

Retirement age should not be increased beyond 60 years of age.

RONALD BHOLA

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