The Saudi Public Retirement Fund (SPRF) is considering raising the retirement age for government employees from the current 60 to 65, business daily Al-Eqtisadiah reported yesterday. Female employees will still be put on obligatory retirement when they complete 20 years in service, said Fatima bint Muhammad Al-Ali, director of the female section in the fund. She pointed out that new changes in the regulations of the fund, which are soon expected to be approved by the concerned authorities, would include enabling inheritors to receive both the pensions of their deceased father and mother. Now, they should choose only one of the two pensions. Al-Ali said putting women on early retirement to provide job opportunities to unemployed Saudi women is not a successful policy. This solution, according to the studies and researches of the fund, provide only a limited number of vacancies, she said. She criticized the policy of early retirement and said it would lead to a disruption in productivity, especially in the sectors of health and education. The solution to the problem of unemployment among women is not by putting working women on early retirement but by creating more job opportunities particularly in the health and educational sector and also by improving the standards of university graduates through preparing them for the labor market, she said.

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Retirement age may be raised to 65