Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala government decided to revoke its decision to raise the retirement age of employees in state-run Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) to 60, on Wednesday, amid unrest and controversies which followed the announcement.
The state cabinet held on Wednesday took the decision as Opposition and youth organizations including DYFI affiliated to CPM expressed strong protest against the move. Even a section of CPM loyalists termed the move to raise the retirement age as anti-youth and anti-thetical to the Left front’s policy. Reports said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan himself put forward the suggestion to temporarily freeze the order.
The U-turn seems to have been necessitated by the bitter and vociferous opposition of even the youth organisations of the Left parties. The DYFI State Secretariat had said that the decision would severely affect lakhs of young job aspirants in Kerala. It urged the government to withdraw the order immediately. The youth wing of the CPI, AIYF, had said that the order marked an unacceptable deviation from Left policy. AIYF state secretary T T Jisman said that this was a clear violation of the assurance the Chief Minister had earlier given youth organisations.
It was on Monday that the government issued an order enacting a slew of measures pertaining to PSUs including raising the retirement age and grading of employees based on performance. Different PSUs had different retirement ages so far. The decision was to unify them by fixing it at 60. Raising retirement age to Central PSU levels was based on the recommendation made by an expert committee led by the chairman of the Restructuring and Internal Audit Board (RIAB), N Sasidharan Nair. The October 29 order issued by the Finance Department said that the uniform pension age of 60 would apply to all PSUs other than the big three: KSEB, Kerala Water Authority and KSRTC.
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