Olaopa Proffers Path to Gainful Retirement

The Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Prof. Tunji Olaopa, has proffered measures that could be adopted for a gainful retirement after service.

Olaopa spoke at a senior citizens’ summit organised by the High-Tech Centre for Women & Youths (HTCNWY) in Abuja on Thursday.

Giving the keynote address at the programme with the
theme “Upskilling Seniors in Cottage Technologies for Sustainable Development & Energize Commercialisation Now”, Olaopa said that
the event resonated with him, being a senior citizen himself and given his experience of sudden retirement at the top level of the civil service after 30 years.

He said that the experience taught him the lesson of the need for proper preparation for transition to retirement life or, better still, gainful post-retirement endeavours.

Olaopa who was represented on the occasion by his Technical Special Assistant, Mr Chike Ogbechie, said that one of the areas of interest in his quest for reforms in the public service was that the wealth of talent, knowledge and capacities left in public servants are kept dormant and thus wasted in retirement.

For him, there is also the concern that except the cases of a few well- endowed and self-funded parastatals of government, the pensions of the vast majority of public service retirees are meagre and cannot sustain their lives meaningfully.

According to him, with the apparent extension of longevity due to improved healthcare, the need for the accumulation of assets and continued income generation for old-age care has become heightened.

“This is more so as the era of children as investment against old age is becoming outdated”, he said.

He noted that
studies on competencies in the public service have shown that for the majority of employees, skills acquired while in service are generally bureaucratic and peculiar to their employing organization and may not be relevant and marketable in the wider economy. He stated that the same observation had been made in respect of employees in staff function of large business organisations, and that even employees who belong to definite professions or technical vocations and who have some value to offer in the service sectors have found it difficult to transition into private business or self-employment without preparation.

Thus , for him, it is imperative to create a system whereby public servants, nay all career employees in all sectors, are to be prepared for post-retirement endeavours.

He listed the objectives of such a system to include keeping the retirees meaningfully engaged, for personal satisfaction, good health and longevity; enabling them to engage in substantial economic activities to at least augment their pensions; harnessing their capacities in contribution to the economy; and providing them the opportunity to mentor younger ones in their areas of competence and success.

He said that under the Federal Public Service Reforms, good practices around the world had been looked at and one of the findings was that it was feasible to give employees skills in entrepreneurship, through social assistance schemes, as part of a terminal benefit package. He said that the idea was practicalised by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms in 2006, through the one-week pre-retirement training for personnel exited in the rightsizing exercise of the Reform Programme. He said that the process was supposed to be adopted by all ministries, departments and agencies as a matter of course, but for one reason or the other it has not been operationalized universally. But he noted that in the Armed Forces, there has traditionally been the more structured preparation of discharged personnel at the Armed Forces Resettlement Centre. But he stated that these schemes had not been as successful as now envisioned. According to him, the practice in the civil service has so far been more of a re-orientation and motivational courses of short duration, carried out mostly in a short while before disengagement date and have no real skilling and practical content.

He suggested a wide spectrum of lessons that retirement preparation should cover: Skills in cottage industries, e.g. soap making; agriculture, including crop farming, livestock, fish farming, snail farming; small-time rental property and land investment; services like business centre/cyber café, laundry, restaurant, tailoring, facility rentals services; educational services like founding and running of schools and private lessons;
founding and running of cooperative societies;
financial investment and
entrepreneurship training; preparation of business plans; and accessing finance.

He said that the training should include hobbies like recreation, healthy living, community/religious services.

According to him, some of these require some period of period practice and exposure, which may not be ordinarily allowed in the current rules and regulation regime of the public service. Thus, to him, there is therefore a need for an intentional policy to bring about an impactful and sustainable retirement preparation system. He thus proffered a review of the Public Service Rules and staff conditions of service to liberalise the rules prohibiting private business by public servants while in service, especially as they affect officers who will retire in a few years’ time. He also urged the introduction of innovations in the rules of work to allow for flexitime, working from home and other elements of the new normal, to enable advanced-age employees to practise post-retirement business activities. He urged the creation of a
documented policy on retirement preparation,
engaging positively with training institutions, public entrepreneurship/employment agencies, NGOs like HTCNWY in retirement preparation programmes as MDAs may not be capable or disposed to conducting such programmes by themselves.

He also urged the creation of enablers for the success of retirees’ enterprises and endeavours, such as special windows for financial credit or grants, tax exemptions, targeted security protection, special preferential treatment by security/law enforcement agencies for retirees’ enterprises, among others.

Olaopa urged relevant NGOs like HTCNWY to proactively initiate moves on the above propositions for an effective and sustainable public-private system.