Govt may extend retirement age for civil servants to 58 - NST

By : Deborah Loh

PUTRAJAYA: The government has agreed in principle to extend the retirement age for civil servants, but has not decided whether it should be at 58 or 60.

Public Service Department director-general Tan Sri Ismail Adam said the matter had yet to be decided by the prime minister.

"He has agreed to the proposal brought by Cuepacs that in principle we can extend the retirement age, but we don't know if it will be 60 years or not," Ismail told the New Straits Times yesterday.

On Thursday, Cuepacs president Omar Osman led a group of executive congress members to a meeting with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, which Ismail also attended.

"The PM said he was willing to consider all of Cuepacs' proposals except the request for an honorarium payment. He said that when the time comes, he will make an announcement, so I take that as a positive sign for the civil servants," Ismail added.

The government has turned down Cuepacs' request for a RM2,000 honorarium payment in lieu of a bonus last year, but has agreed to study its other requests: for pensions to be based on the civil servants' actual years of service, reinstatement of critical allowances and housing allowances, and scrapping of the Efficiency Level Assessment (PTK) test for certain grades of civil servants.

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