afrol News, 7 July - The Tunisian parliament has approved an early retirement law for public servants, to create job opportunities for young university graduates. The retirement age in Tunisia is 60.

Officials said the new set of regulations under the new law would allow employees to retire three years earlier, thus freeing up public sector jobs.

According to the official, the law complements the long dragging vision of the government of having young and skilful resources for the development of the country, while on the other hand it will do away with the high unemployment, especially for young university degree holders.

Local media reported Minister Zohair Modhaffer, Minister-Delegate in the Prime Minister's Office in charge of Civil Service and Administrative Development, saying that the law would be applied to civil servants, local groups, public administrative institutions and employees in public health institutions who will reach age 60 from 1 January 2010 through 31 December 2012.

“It would be voluntary, so that the Tunisian administration will not be short of qualified resources," reports added.

The government expects the law to create up to 7,000 new vacancies.

Some analysts have said the early retirement initiative has long been adopted by commercial and industrial sectors including some of the parastatals in Tunisia taking advantage of young skilled labour.

The country’s official statistics puts unemployment rate between 13 and 14 percent, though local unionists refutes the numbers saying they are little too low for Tunisia.

The government has launched several initiatives to solve the problem, including offering bank loans to young graduates to establish small income generating businesses to beat high rate of varsity graduates unemployment.

By staff writer

© afrol News

Related pages and feature

Current afrol News Top Stories