The elderly to get axed first

While most of the capitalistic world celebrates workers day on May 1, in Maldives the Government employees aged 65 and older will be forced to retire on the same day, when the Civil Service Act comes into effect.

While streamlining the bloated and inefficient civil service structure is necessary, the layoffs for older workers come even while there is no pension provisions in place for them. Thus the changes will come hard on a vulnerable segment of our society who are understandably nervous especially because no other opportunity exists for any alternative gainful work.

These forcibly retired civil servants will be completely dissolutioned when they realise that for politicians, the same standard is not applied. This is a debatable point which ought to be debated in parliament to work out a similar retirement age for politicians as well. The political parties need to look into this in the interest of fairness.

As usual our Government, the opposition political parties in parliament and the civil service commission are targeting the older workers first- the soft targets that can be pushed over into despair without the rancour which will come with aged politicians serving their own interest by remaining on public payroll.

As pointed out by the MMA governor Jihad, in addition to the failed monetary policy there is a growing income inequality among Maldivians, and he is calling for greater wealth redistribution through taxation. He believes the bill on business profit tax, currently awaiting parliamentary consideration, would be “a step in the right direction”, but questions whether there is the “political willpower” to pass the bill in an election year.

Thus, without any regard to build a resilient community through financial security for retirement, the older workers are driven off like sheep to the slaughter house. Maldives is a country that has an expatriate population of 65,000 foreign workers. Surely some of our older workers can be retrained to stretch their work potential and create innovative work opportunities to fit younger workers or replace expatriate labour where Maldivians can be given the training and incentives to step in to the job.

Beyond the benefit of the pension the older workers will get, the Government will need to also provide targeted assistance to those of them who need help to adjust to the increased cost of living conditions.

Our economy needs to be restructured. We should provide a full range of education and training for people to take up work opportunities in the hospitality industry and other indutries like fishing, agriculture and retail business. To spur the growth of innovative enterprises, our Government should provide adequate incentives for people to create new ideas and products. We have the resources and the capacity to achieve these results if the politicians can find the will to do so.