By Joachim Ng
Jobstreet has reported a 13% rise in job applications from seniors aged 60 and above who need work to pay their bills especially with the extended life expectancy. On the surface this looks impressive but is really a paltry number, as the percentage of residents aged 60 and over in Perak stands at 14.9% with 9.9% aged 65 or older.
If you’re a private sector urban retiree and you have just RM300,000 in your EPF and other 5% dividend-paying accounts, you are living on RM1,250 passive income a month.
Can this amount cover all your bills – housing, medical insurance premiums, health supplements, food, Internet and phone bills, electricity, water, laundry, transport? This assumes that you get your medicines and medical checkups at government hospitals. The minimum wage is scheduled to be at RM1,700 per month from next February. You are far below that level.
Statistics show that EPF members in the 60-64 age group have average savings of only RM118,779. Members in the 65 and above category are even worse off with average savings of only RM74,157.
The recommended minimum wage is actually RM2,000 per month. To earn that amount in dividend income, you need to have RM500,000. And this is on the presumption that you can get 5% annual dividend. What if the payout is lower? If you fall short of RM500,000 as your minimum savings, you must get back into the workforce.
The Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is the Member of Parliament for Tambun. Private sector retirees who lack enough funds should form a lobby group and seek a meeting with the PM. Ask him two questions: “Are you running a government for young people only, or is it a government for all people without age discrimination?” “If you are running a government for all people, why are seniors forced out of work at age 60 when life expectancy is going to be at 80?”
A senior-age lobby group also has the numbers to tell the nation’s economists: look 10 years ahead and not just 5 years. If they keep planning for just 5 years ahead, they will continue missing the big picture.
What’s on the horizon 10 years ahead? Many thousands of broke and hungry private sector retirees pitching tents as their new homes in our city parks, overhead bridges, and on street pavements.
In the United States of America, there are already 650,000 individuals made homeless by rising house rents and soaring prices of daily necessities – just as in Malaysia. America’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, in disclosing the shocking figure last December, said the figure was a 12% increase over the previous year. In fact, most American experts agree that 650,000 is an undercount.
This is the inevitable scene if we keep throwing seniors out of their jobs to make way for youths. Yet the nation’s economists are frantically calling on mothers to produce more babies so as to keep expanding the consumer base for locally manufactured goods.
It is wrong to maintain that seniors spend little money and hence fail to support the economy. Seniors form a large segment of consumers for the pharmaceutical industry as they purchase medicines and supplements in bigger quantities than youngsters. Although youngsters form the majority of private hospital patients, the 60-80 age group provides the largest segment compared with any of the three junior segments: 0-20, 20-40, 40-60.
Malaysia’s economists should visit a slum district in Mumbai where 800,000 people live in tiny rooms across narrow alleys, struggling to find jobs. Nearly 30% of India’s more than 1.4 billion people are under age 30, a lost generation that has been described as “a ticking time bomb” as only 24 million jobs are likely to be created over the next 10 years leaving behind 46 million jobless youths.
A shocking 45% of youths lack employment, according to the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy. The cause of this gloom is revealed in the birth statistics: In 2000, India’s birth rate was a high 2.7%. In 1990, it was a superhigh 3.2%. In 1980, it was a stupefying 3.6%. In 1970, it was a horrifying 3.9%. It was only in 2010 that the birthrate fell to the 2.1 replacement rate favoured by nature to sustain a population within its available resources.
Most jobs available in India are scooped up by the 40-50s age group, leaving the 20-30s group idling their days away.
Malaysia’s birth rate in 1990 was a high 2.9%. In 2000, it remained still high at 2.6%. It was only in 2008 that it fell to the 2.1 replacement rate. It should be no wonder that for the past 15 years, economists have been eager to see the oldies pushed out.
If birth rates throughout Malaysia fall below the 2.1% level – and that’s not the case in all states – the economists should view it as a compensatory mechanism at work. Don’t fight it as that means fighting against nature. Do they prefer a killer epidemic instead?
It is heartening to note that last April the Malaysian Employers Federation issued a statement welcoming the re-employment of seniors as they can share their work experiences, holistic perspectives, and knowledge of customer requirements with the younger crowd.
Instead of fretting over declining birth rates, economists should look at the huge labour pool of well-seasoned workers.
Here are some easy steps to fit in 60-year-old employees without retiring them:
- Redesignate seniors, including those in command positions, to non-command fixed-term contract work on half-day basis.
- Cut their pay by half but maintain the EPF contribution portion by employer.
- Remove medical benefits as there is this unfounded fear that seniors are more prone to sickness than younger workers. But visit any hospital and you can see large numbers of below 60s lining up to see the doctors.
- Facilitate seniors’ interest in spending time looking after grandchildren by allowing tours of their workplaces.
- Enrol these oldie workers in courses that enable them to become more tech-savvy. As the HRD levy scheme covers the payments, there is no extra cost to employers.
Persistent youth unemployment is not due to oldies remaining on the job, as the cause lies in the mismatch between the number of university students graduating every year and the lack of suitable jobs for these degree holders.
The proper solution is to route school-leavers into vocational colleges to acquire technical skills so lacking in our country as witnessed by the near-complete absence of maintenance operations resulting in bad roads, poor drainage, rotting public amenities and so forth.
Here are another three constructive proposals:
- The Government must discourage the over-dependence on cheap foreign labour in service industries. Their great numbers depress wages, creating a bizarre situation in which salaries of locals also remain stagnant while prices keep rising. Cheap foreign labour swamps our eateries, barber shops, retail stores, and even theme parks. Jobs such as cooks, attendants, and servers must be offered to local seniors as a priority and filled by foreigners only if these are specialist tasks.
- If there are no more seniors waiting to fill these jobs, a good source of local labour is the huge store of tertiary students who should be keen to take up jobs during vacation time and on loose weekends. Back in the 1990s, it was a common sight to be served by local students. Many countries still boast a robust student workforce. Parents should welcome this practice as it gives their children job experience.
3. If there are industries that by the nature of work must retire the oldies, redeploy these retirees into cottage industries such as the manufacture of dishwashing detergents to be supplied to restaurants. The Government should facilitate this process as it is in the public interest to keep retirees at work.
