THE announcement that the Government will amend the increase of the contentious 65 years retirement age should bring smiles to many employees who felt the Government acted overbearingly when it made the increase.
As Labour and Social Security Minister Fackson Shamenda has stated, the Government has revisited the law assented by former Acting President Guy Scott in December last year to make it relevant to the Zambian labour industry.
From the onset, the 65 years retirement age received misgivings with many workers strongly arguing that the Government should not have made it compulsory but voluntary with an option to retire at 55 years.
The fact that life expectancy is getting shorter and shorter in Zambia, should make the Government allow people to retire while their energy and mental faculties are intact than wait till they hit six decades of working.
Some workers even suggested that the retirement age be pegged at 60 years as is the case in most southern and eastern region of Africa such as Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.
The 65 years retirement age was largely copied from Europe without considering the fact that the lifestyle abroad greatly differs from African countries, a continent where fewer and fewer workers are clocking 60.
The average of retirement age in the 34 countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for males is 65 years and females 63.5 years, but the tendency all over the world is to increase the retirement age.
Understandably, in the west, the only plausible argument for increasing the retirement age, is because the people are living longer and the life expectancy is about 70 years due to improved health facilities.
For Zambia, life expectancy has fallen dismally to less than 40 years leading to no reasonable justification for increasing the retirement age.
Even at 55, the Government needs to empower civil servants early in their careers through plot/land allocation, loans, timely payment of benefits and entrepreneurship training to ensure fewer retirees suffer depression and die after retirement.
The other reason workers feared to wait until they were 65 for them to retire was not enjoying their terminal benefits while they were strong. Though not raised in their debate against the 65 years retirement age, this reason is important to consider.
All the same, the u-turn by the Government on this important issue shows that the Patriotic Front administration is a listening one and would not bulldoze a law that is widely unpopular.
We are in a modern society where labour considerations between the two parties-employer and employee are of cardinal importance for mutual satisfaction.
Failure to address the issue would have made the Government behave like WENELA employers who conscripted our forefathers to work on the farms and mines without consulting them on any labour issue that concerned them.
As things stand workers can now wait for the decision from Government that would enable them to retire when they are still strong enough to do other things or even to enjoy their benefits.
The 65 years retirement age dampened the morale of many workers in Zambia though they had no platform to air their grievances on such a domineering ruling.
Fortunately, the issue would be addressed with a possibility for workers to retire at 55 years to prepare for other things in life. OPINION