Retire older civil servants early to create jobs for young people

The government should bolster policies to incentivise early, voluntary, and timely retirement to improve efficiency in the public sector and create opportunities for the youthful, highly energetic population.

Whenever we think of going to seek services in government offices, what comes to mind is lethargy and inefficiency combined. Mostly, we have a picture of a senior citizen trying to hunt-and-peck on a modern computer. In 2024, we expect such tasks to be executed by Gen Zs.

Shockingly, the identity cards of these senior citizens in the workforce show that, their ages are within the working brackets—this being Kenya, we do not need to teach you everything.

To be served in some of these public offices, you must have a begging and a waiting spirit. Sometimes, you can be kept waiting from 15 minutes to 1pm to 15 minutes after 2pm, if at all they come back to the offices. There is a proven reason most citizens hate seeking services in government corporations and prefer the private sector.

While some of these weaknesses result from demotivation and poor work environment, most emanate from an age-related lack of energy for initiative and disengagement with the current workforce demands.

A few weeks ago, Government Spokesperson Isaac Mwaura announced that the government expects 43,000 civil servants to retire to create jobs for the youth in the next five years. He implied that the government is leaving the issue of unemployment to chance.

The government should retire the aged public sector workforce and create space for youthful, energetic, innovative, and creative minds. In addition to pumping new blood into the system for effectiveness and efficiency, retirements should balance opportunities in society.

Those who have had a chance to serve their country should also give it to others. This way, citizens will stop thinking of employment as a permanent opportunity and learn to prepare to retire either early or to put their lives in order while on the job.

However, for the government to achieve this noble goal, it should be ready to put in place incentives that encourage citizens to think of retiring early voluntarily and to prepare for retirement years.

The concept of retirement was started to create employment for the youthful population. History has it that in the 18th century, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck reasoned that persons over 70 were unable to be productive in the labour sector.

In the United States, the need to eliminate senior citizens came with the industrial revolution, when aged factory workers slowed assembly lines and spent most of their workdays on sick leave. More importantly, older workers blocked youthful people, who were highly productive, from employment—the exact argument I am advancing today.

Human resource productivity experts would agree that William Osler's famous "15 golden years of plenty" theory makes sense. Osler posited that a person is productive before 40 years and that at 60, productivity declines significantly, calling for a need for a replacement, which should be humanely done through retirement.

For this reason, it is impossible for workers over 60-years-old to be innovative, creative, and adaptive to new ways of doing things. Even in places where we see aged persons succeeding, especially in management, it is because they have mastered the art of managing young people’s innovation and creativity to bring efficiency to workplaces, and this happens largely in the private sector.

The public sector has a different mindset because it cares less about innovation, creativity, and efficiency in service delivery. It is also important to note that the public sector is not only filled with ineffective people due to age, but a majority are under-qualified and unable to perform duties.

Dr Ndonye is a senior lecturer at Kabarak University’s Department of Mass Communication