5,000 govt staff to retire this month as age norm changes

CHANDIGARH: In a massive fallout of the BJP government reversing the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led government's decision of raising the retirement age of government staff from 58 years to 60 years, 5,000 Haryana employees would retire on a single day, November 30 -- the cut-off date for implementation of the rollback.
In the run-up to assembly polls, the Congress government had in August raised the retirement age of employees by two years with an eye on winning over the employee vote bank.This meant that no employee would have retired in the next 2 years. However, with the Manohar Lal Khattar regime scrapping this decision, an average of 1200 employees will be retiring in different departments of the state every month. The figure for this month is much higher as all those who didn't not retire after August with the change in retirement age would retire together. Haryana principal secretary (finance) PK Das told the Times of India that around 4% employees of the around 3.75 lakh employees of state government, boards and corporations, retire every year. As per estimates, the government would have to bear the financial burden of around Rs 75 crore immediately in the form of retirement benefits of these 5,000 employees.
However, the Khattar government claimed that the retirement age had been rolled back to ensure maximum employment opportunity to the youth. A senior official said that the decision would also create promotional opportunities for serving employees whose chances of promotion would have been blocked for two years. "Retirement of an employee gives opportunity of promotion to 4-5 employees," he added.
Upset with the Khattar government's move, Sarv Karmchari Sangh - an umbrella body of employees union in Haryana - has called a meeting at Hisar on November 30 to decide the next course of action. "Its not logical to snatch this facility from Haryana employees when central government and other BJP-ruled states like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring Punjab are retiring its employees at the age of 60," said Subhash Lamba, general secretary of the sangh.