KUALA LUMPUR - An "older" employee can still contribute to a company and might even perform better than a younger colleague, said a unionist.
Metal Industry Employees' Union executive secretary G. Rajasekaran said an older employee was not necessarily less productive.
"He knows the job and might even do it faster than younger employees," he noted in his paper Minimum Retirement Age: Are We Ready? at a conference here yesterday.
The new minimum retirement age of 60 will come into effect on July 1, involving some 600,000 companies.
"I am happy that it is finally being implemented but we are at least 10 years behind time," said Rajasekaran, who was MTUC secretary-general from 1994 until 2010.
Raising the retirement age, he said, was necessary given Malay-sia's ageing society.
"Our average lifespan is 75 years and private sector employees are wholly dependent on their EPF savings after retiring.
"Extending the retirement age will enable them to have more savings when they stop working," he said.
Rajasekaran added that more than 86 per cent of EPF members do not have enough savings for the next 20 years after retiring at 55.
A 2010 EPF study showed that 72.8 per cent or 151,787 members have less than RM50,000 when they reach 54 years of age and 10.7 per cent or 22,881 had between RM50,001 (S$20,340) and RM100,000.
"A survey in 2003 showed that 14 per cent of retirees finish their savings within three years and 50 per cent within five years," he added.
Federation of Malaysian Manu-facturers vice-president Davies Danavaindran said employers would retain hardworking emplo-yees, noting it was difficult to "hire good people these days".
"The private sector has been granting extensions to employees who are able and willing to work beyond 55 on a year-to-year basis and even up to 70 years in some cases," he said.
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