What is the retiring age for women?
Dear Mirror Lawyer, What is the legal retiring age for women? Do we have a retiring age for all workers in Ghana, irrespective of the workplace?
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Pamela Hanson, Tema
Dear Hanson,The 1992 Constitution frowns on discrimination of any kind. Gone were the days when women had a different retiring age from men in public services. Under the constitution, women, as well as men, who work in the public services are to retire voluntarily at the age of 45 and compulsorily at the age of 60 years.
Article 190 of the 1992 Constitution lists the public services of Ghana. The constitution also provides that certain persons within the public service such as the chairs of the Electoral Commission, Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice, the National Commission for Civic Education and judges shall retire compulsorily at other ages such as 65 and 70.
Unless a public officer falls within any of those special classes of retiring ages, all public officeholders are mandated under the constitution to retire and vacate their offices on attainment of 60 years.
In 1996, there was an amendment to the 1992 Constitution which is the Amendment of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana (Amendment) Act, 1996, Act 527. Section 6 of that Act amended Article 199 of the constitution by inserting a new clause 4 which provides as follows:
“Notwithstanding Clause 1 of this Article, a public officer who has retired from the public service after attaining the age of 60 years may, where the exigencies of the service require, be engaged for a limited period of not more than two years at a time but not exceeding five years in all and upon such other terms and conditions as the appointing authority shall determine.”
The implication of this amendment is that a public officer may be re-employed for a limited period of two years at a time up to a maximum of five years after attaining the age of 60.
This is what we call the ‘contract’ of service. But for a public officer to bring himself under this amendment, the following conditions must be satisfied.
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• He or she must retire from the public service on the attainment of 60 years.
• To be re-engaged on contract basis for a period of 2 years at a time, he or she must be in active service serving in a particular capacity before attaining the age of 60 years.
• There must be nobody immediately available to occupy the position he is being re-engaged on contract basis to serve.
The provision stated above applies only to workers in the public services. In the case of workers in the private sector, their retiring age is determined by their conditions of service or contract of employment.
In the absence of any provision for compulsory retirement of such workers in the private sector, the worker can work until he or she determines when to retire.
However, any provision in the conditions of service of workers in the private sector which states a different retiring age for men and women will be discriminatory and unconstitutional and will have no force of law.
Retiring ages have been abolished in many countries for all categories of workers. It has been found to be discriminatory for workers to be asked to state their ages before they are employed.
In those countries, workers are permitted to work until they decide on their own to retire.
The public services in Ghana has lost very experienced medical doctors, professors at the universities and administrators at the prime of their careers to the private sector because of the current compulsory retiring age.