By IANS,
Thiruvananthapuram : Kerala Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan Tuesday said there would be no increase in retirement age of state government employees.
Balakrishnan told the state assembly that although state government employees in Kerala retire at the age of 55, which is the lowest in the country, there had been no demand for raising the retirement age.
“So far no political party in the state has come up with the demand for increasing the retirement age. The question of raising the retirement age does not exist as of now,” said Balakrishnan.
The talk of raising the retirement age of government employees takes centre-stage whenever the state faces acute financial shortage because every year a large amount of money is disbursed to pay retirement benefits of government employees.
Pension and salary payments constitute around 75 percent of the state’s non-plan expenditure, crippling the state’s finances.
In the past 10 years, the annual salary payments to government employees have jumped from Rs.22.16 billion to Rs.80.55 billion and pension from Rs.7.53 billion to Rs.40.54 billion
Another reason why no political party will take up the issue of increasing the retirement age is on account of the four million unemployed people registered with the employment exchanges, of which women alone account for 2.2 million.