CoI recommendation to raise public service retirement age to 65 being ignored

Dear Editor,

Actually, the trend of re-recruiting is a positive sign, particularly when it involves veterans, since there is just the hint that ‘other public servants’ could have similar expectations. The fact is, however, that the latter have been thoroughly frustrated having to cope with a requirement that has existed since before the independence we celebrate: Guyana’s public servants must retire at age 55 years; possibly an aberration within the Caribbean Single Market Economy.

It befuddles thinking when the very authority which commissioned the Commission of Inquiry into the Public Service, and, to all intents and purposes, accepted its recommendations, persists in ignoring that which would raise the retirement age of public servants to 65 years – comparable to so many of their ministers. (Meanwhile, they must wonder about the age of the head of the Public Service).

It is at least a conundrum that there is strict enforcement of teachers’ departures at the age 55 years in the midst of a substantive education crisis. It is at the same time inexplicable that the Executive Director of the Bertram Collins Stage College is old enough to be ‘senior’ to even retired teachers, albeit in a position for which the selection criteria were not advertised, like that of the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation. Is there a connection somewhere? (Note the following retirement ages: Guyana Revenue Authority - 60 years; Audit Office of Guyana - 60 years; Guyana Power and Light - 65 years).

Do contracted employees have a retirement deadline?

Yours faithfully, E B John