Kerala Finance Minister KN Balagopal on Tuesday denied any plans to raise the retirement age of the state government employees. "Even though this is one way to stabilise the financial position of the state, we have no plans to increase the retirement age," said Balagopal to the media. Incidentally, Kerala is the one of the few states where government employees retire at age 56, while in majority of the states the retirement age is higher and in some states it's 60.
Even though successive governments in Kerala have been mulling this, with close to four million unemployed youths waiting for a job, no government has done anything in this regard. The state government has five lakh employees and an equal number of pensioners. A major part of the government's revenue goes to the payment of salaries and pension.
In the past, there has been serious thought to increasing the retirement age as it was the Oommen Chandy government (2011-16) that decided to make 56 as the retirement age for all its employees whether school, college teachers or others. Prior to this, the retirement age was 55 years. Along with this decision, the Chandy government also decided that all new government employees from henceforth will retire at age 60. But the employees will have only the contributory pension and not the statutory pension scheme.
Incidentally, in 2016, the Left Democratic Front in their election manifesto had promised that 'they would revert to the statutory pension scheme' and had appointed a committee to study that. "The committee's report is there with us and we will be studying that to decide on what needs to be done," said Minister Balagopal.
Balagopal when asked if the state government is planning to appoint a panel of experts like Tamil Nadu did on Monday, he said even though no panel is going to be appointed, they often speak to experts in all fields for technical advice.
Meanwhile, stating that the Union government’s move to bring natural gas and molasses used for captive consumption under Goods and Service Tax (GST), is detrimental to the states, he added that the Kerala government will oppose the move, reported The Hindu.
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