The Nigerian Government has announced that it is proposing to increase the retirement age to 65 years for normal health workers and doctors, and 70 years for consultants, in a bid to keep health workers in Nigeria.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige, in a meeting between the Presidential Committee on Salaries (PSC), relevant Federal Government stakeholders, Health Sector Professional Associations, and Trade Unions on Tuesday in Abuja.
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What Ngige is saying about the proposed retirement age for health workers
“We have taken their proposal. The government side will firm up its own proposal and we are reconvening June 1, so that we can have an agreed hazard allowance for health workers in Nigeria.
We also discussed the issue of retirement age for health workers, being that we want to keep our health workers here in Nigeria. A lot of people are coming here to poach and take away people we have trained at very great cost.
It takes a lot of funds to train a medical doctor, nurse or even a laboratory technologist or physiotherapist. So, we want to retain them here,” Ngige said.
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The Minister added that health workers could be retained for a longer period, citing a proposed retirement age of 65 for health workers and doctors and 70 years for consultants. He revealed that the FG had called back retired health workers during the pandemic, and delayed retirement age by six months for health workers to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
What you should know
The FG’s proposal to keep health workers is a complete u-turn from an earlier strategy, as Nairametrics reported in 2019 that the Labour Minister had said he was not bothered about the decision of some medical doctors who chose to leave Nigeria to practice outside the country.
Increase in retirement age for health workers from 60yrs to 65yrs hshould not be approved.itis anti youths policy.we have thousands of qualified Doctors. Nurses and other health workers roaming the streets without jobs.many graduates are doing okada busines. They should retire at 60yrs to create space for unemployed youths. In fact these health workers are selfish. Youths are really suffering in this country.
It’s a brilliant idea, considering the fact that alot of health workers are inexperience. But, onthe job training and retraining must be made compulsory and infact be made to serve as a prerequisite for promotion or something better up for both trainers and trainees. And more importantly the training must be carried out by the benifeciaries of the elongation.