Review of Public Administration and Management

Status of Retired Employees of Civil Service Attending Pension Management Office, Kathmandu, Nepal

Achyut Bikram Hamal^*, Arjun B Hamal and Jharana Shah Department of Internal Medicine, Nepal Police Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal
^*Correspondence: Achyut Bikram Hamal, Department of Internal Medicine, Nepal Police Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal, Email:

Received: 13-Aug-2019, Manuscript No. RPAM-24-1162; Editor assigned: 16-Aug-2019, Pre QC No. RPAM-24-1162 (PQ); Reviewed: 30-Aug-2019, QC No. RPAM-24-1162; Revised: 16-Aug-2024, Manuscript No. RPAM-24-1162 (R); Published: 13-Sep-2024, DOI: 10.35248/2315-7844.24.12.471

Introduction

Retiring means exiting from the long journey of work and at the same time claiming the social welfare benefits. In groundwork process of planning, age can be a guide for pre-retirees and individual that lead to attitude and perception changes on retirement. It also helps to increase the confidence of retirees and individuals.

Among the factors related to retirement planning plans, age, education level, gender and household income are characterized as important demographic factors toward individual retirement preparation. A study done in employees of health sector of Malaysia, it was found that age, income and educational status had significantly affected the retirement planning while there was no difference in relation to gender.

In general, there are also extensive studies on retirement covering education level. The findings suggest that education level is one of important factors affecting retirement planning preparation. Income is important in the sense that enough money or wealth resources are needed in order to make retirement preparation work [1].

Statement of the problem

In Nepal, most of the civil servants get compulsorily retired at the age of 58 except the technical employees who usually get retired only after 60.

Since the life expectancy in Nepalese population has increased as compared to the previous years. Life expectancy in Nepal reached 72 years for women and 69 years for men in 2013. This is an increase of 12 years over the last two decades-a rate, double the global average. Nepal was ranked among the top 10 best performers. As the life expectancy increases the state will expect the experienced and the trained employees to be actively involved in making the policies and plans for better service delivery to the public. At the same time the retirement of the inefficient and aged manpower should be replaced by energetic and active employees. Therefore, the retirement age also should match the life expectancy.

There can be different questions that can be generated about the retired employees. Some of them may include:

• What is the educational status of civil servants being retired?
• What is the household income of retired employees?
• What is the perception of retired employee towards retirement?
• What is the living standard of the retired employee after retirement?

This study will help to assess the answers to such questions and will help to improve the policies of retirement and the necessities to address them.

Objectives

• To analyze the status of the employees being retired.
• To find out the perception of the retired employees towards retirement [2].

Significance of the study

Retirement is an excitation as well as a condition of accomplishment of the work by an employee towards the nation. Any employee retiring has a plan for his/her rest of the life. The unplanned and inappropriate action for the decision of retirement is governed by a number of factors such as age, education income and the attitude of the employees towards the retirement.

In Nepal many of the times the employees decide to retire due to various factors that ranges from a transfer to remote areas to impulsive decision after the inconvenience to continue the work in the changing environment. There is an ongoing debate about the extension of age limit for the compulsory retirement due to the improved health status and the need of experienced employees in the civil service. The desire to serve the nation by the experienced employees and the recruitment of younger generation in civil service must be equally respected [3].

Social security is also an important aspect for the employees being retired. During their working phase, individuals pay a social security tax each period. One of the primary objectives of social security is to replace income during retirement. In so doing, social security benefits supplement and partially substitute for prior savings. The presence of these benefits is therefore expected to affect individuals’ decisions concerning consumption, savings and labor supply, including the choice of retirement age. The purpose of the present paper is to focus on the potential inducement to retire earlier in the presence of social security and on the implied effects on lifetime savings.

Besides, skills and knowledge may influence early retirement. Provision of and participation in education and training was associated with reductions in intention to retire early and actual retirement behavior. Persons with a higher focus on development of knowledge and skills also appeared less likely to retire.

Materials and Methods

Research design

A descriptive cross-sectional research methodology was used in this study.

Rationale of site selection

Pension management office, Teku, Kathmandu was selected as the site because all the government employees being retired finally attend this office to make their documents for pension [4].

Population of the study

The retired government employees from civil service were taken as the population of the study. Among them those attending the pension management office, Kathmandu were taken. The civil servants were taken as the population because they have uniform criteria of retirement as compared to other services such as army or police.

Sample size

Retired civil service employees attending pension management office, Kathmandu were taken. Total number of retired civil employees were 130 however only 105 gave the consent and responded.

Sampling technique

All the retired civil service employees who attend to make the pension documents in the pension management office were enrolled in this study. The employees giving consent were considered.

Inclusion criteria

• Retired employees of civil service were taken.
• Retired employees giving consent were taken.
• Those attending the pension management office were included.

Exclusion criteria

• Those not willing to take part in study were excluded.
• Retired employees from other sectors such as police army and education were excluded [5].

Results and Discussion

Data collection procedure

The employees were informed about the purpose of the study and the verbal consent was taken. They were asked about their details and to fill up the questionnaires prepared to assess their profile and their perceptions towards retirement.

Limitations of the study

• It is a small-scale study.
• Other retired government employees from education, police, army and public enterprises were not included.
• The distribution of the retired employees from civil service in may not be comparable to even throughout the year.

Demographic profile

In this study, the total number of retired civil servants was 130, however only 105 retirees preferred to respond to the questionnaires after giving verbal consent. Among them there were 90 males (85.7%) and 15 (14.3%) were females. The predominant population was male as there was the provision of the inclusion of women since 2007. Among the females most of them were non-gazetted and classless (Table 1).

Table 1: Gender.

Most retirees had education of only PCL level i.e., 52.3% and 22% of them were below or equal to SLC level education.

There were 16.2% retirees graduates and about 9.5% had master level education (Table 2).

Table 2: Education level.

About fifty seven percent of the retired employees had no extra household income other than the pension. About 19% and 17.2% of them had extra household income of about less than 5000 rupees and 5000-10000 respectively while total of 7 retirees had household income of more than 10000 rupees per month (Table 3).

Table 3: Household income.

About the marital status, there were 90.5% married and 1.9% were living as single. Similarly, the percentages of widowed and divorced were 4.8% and 2.8% respectively (Table 4) [6].

Table 4: Marital status.

It was seen that 57.1% of the retired employees had served the nation for 20-25 yrs duration; about 32.4% of them had served the nation for 26-30 yrs duration while 10.5% (11) of them had served for more than 30 yrs (Table 5).

Table 5: Years of service.

Similarly, the most of the employees i.e., 70% were nongazetted employees and 16% of them were gazetted officers followed by classless i.e., 14% of the total employees retired (Table 6) [7].

Table 6: Levels at the time of retirement.

Perception of retired employees towards retirement

On the assessment of the perception of the retired employees, most of them i.e., 40 (38.1%) were not at all satisfied about the retirement program while 29 (27.6%) were somewhat satisfied followed by 25 (23.8%) of them very satisfied while 11 (10.5%) of them were undecided (Table 7).

Table 7: Satisfaction with the retirement program.

About the knowledge of the details of the retirement program, 38 (36.2%) of them were very well known; 47 (44.8%) were somewhat known and 20 (19%) were ignorant about the details about the retirement (Table 8) [8].

Table 8: Details of retirement known.

There were several reasons for the retirement. The most common reason for being retired was the compulsory retirement which was followed by the reasons of poor health and family problems each counting about 14.2%.

About 2.9% chose retirement for the alternative opportunities and 2% had increased workload (Table 9).

Table 9: Reasons for retirement.

Most of the retired employees i.e., 48.5% rated the retirement program as fair and about 42% rated it as poor while only 9.5% of them rated it as good (Table 10) [9].

Table 10: Rating of retirement program of Nepal.

Most of the retired employees i.e., 80 (76.2%) felt that the money received from the retirement would be very important while 25 (23.8%) of them felt it to be somewhat important (Table 11).

Table 11: Importance of money from retirement.

On assessing the rating of standard of living now by themselves, 90 (85.7%) of them felt that it was same as before retirement while 10 (9.5%) of them were undecided followed by the claim of 5 (4.8%) of them as their living standard better than that of before (Table 12) [10].

Table 12: Rating of standard of living now.

Conclusion

About 85% of the retired employees attending pension management office were male predominantly which contrasts with the study done in Malaysia where the female predominated i.e., 55%. Only 16.2% retirees graduate and about 9.5% had master level education and most of them had proficiency certificate level education.

Most of them (57.1%) of the retired employees had no extra household income other than the pension and they had to depend upon the pension they receive. About the marital status, there were 90.5% married which is higher than that of the study done in health employees in Malaysia i.e., 72%.

It was seen that 57.1% of the retired employees had served the nation for 20-25 yrs duration; about 32.4% of them had served the nation for 26-30 yrs duration while 10.5% of them had served for more than 30 yrs. This indicates that the country loses most of the skilled employees within 25 yrs. So, this means either there is less satisfaction among the government employees or the entry of individuals in government service is late.

On the assessment of the perception of the retired employees, most of them i.e., 40 (38.1%) were not at all satisfied about the retirement program. About the knowledge of the details of the retirement program, 38 (36.2%) of them were very well known; 47 (44.8%) were somewhat known and 20 (19%) were ignorant about the details about the retirement.

There were several reasons for the retirement. The most common reason for being retired was the compulsory retirement which was followed by the reasons of poor health and family problems each counting about 14.2%. Most of the retired employees i.e., 48.5% rated the retirement program as fair and about 42% rated it as poor.

Most of the retired employees i.e., 80 (76.2%) felt that the money received from the retirement would be very important. On rating of standard of living by themselves, 90 (85.7%) of them felt that it was same as before retirement.

As the life expectancy of people of Nepal is increasing the compulsory retirement age limit may be increased in order to decrease the expenditure of the country by using the skilled manpower for longer duration. The increased cost of living in Nepal always make the retirees dissatisfied about the pension amount they receive as most other family members are dependent on them.

References

1. de Wind A, Geuskens GA, Ybema JF, Bongers PM, van der Beek AJ. The role of ability, motivation and opportunity to work in the transition from work to early retirement-testing and optimizing the early retirement model. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2015:24-35.

   [Crossref] [Google Scholar] [PubMed]

2. Beehr TA, Glazer S, Nielson NL, Farmer SJ. Work and nonwork predictors of employees' retirement ages. J Vocat Behav. 2000;57(2):206-225.

   [Crossref] [Google Scholar]

3. Bernheim BD. A theory of conformity. J Political Econ. 1994;102(5):841-877.

   [Google Scholar]

4. Bidewell J, Griffin B, Hesketh B. Timing of retirement: Including a delay discounting perspective in retirement models. J Vocat Behav. 2006;68(2):368-387.

   [Crossref] [Google Scholar]

5. Aboyans V. Global, regional and national age-sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990-2013: A systematic analysis for the global burden of disease study 2013. Lancet. 2015;385(9963):117-171.

   [Google Scholar]

6. Christie AM, Barling J. Disentangling the indirect links between socioeconomic status and health: The dynamic roles of work stressors and personal control. J App Psychol. 2009;94(6):1466.

   [Crossref] [Google Scholar][PubMed]

7. DeVaney SA. Retirement preparation of older and younger baby boomers. J Financial Counsel Plan. 1995;6:25.

   [Google Scholar]

8. Damman M, Henkens K, Kalmijn M. The impact of midlife educational, work, health and family experiences on men’s early retirement. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2011;66(5):617-627.

   [Crossref] [Google Scholar] [PubMed]

9. de Wind A, Geuskens GA, Ybema JF, Blatter BM, Burdorf A, Bongers PM, et al. Health, job characteristics, skills and social and financial factors in relation to early retirement-results from a longitudinal study in the Netherlands. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2014:186-194.

   [Crossref] [Google Scholar] [PubMed]

10. Grable JE. Financial risk tolerance and additional factors that affect risk taking in everyday money matters. J Buss Psychol. 2000;14:625-630.

    [Google Scholar]