An issue came up surrounding the recent appointment of Keith Franca as Managing Director of Princess Juliana International Airport Holding Company (PJIAH). It will only be for one year (see Thursday paper) because he is already past the mandatory retirement age.
This is not about him, but about maintaining such restrictions for not only executive, but also supervisory and advisory board positions. The latter two, certainly, ought to be part-time and hardly require intensive labour.
One argument to raise the pension age has been that medical advances make it possible for people to lead productive lives longer. Yet the same logic is not always applied regarding the practice of forcing perhaps well-functioning persons to step down due to how old they are.
“Age is just a number,” sang late calypso legend Mighty Sparrow and he is increasingly being proven right. Fewer and fewer seniors consider themselves ready to stop working and stay home.
There is also a significant degree of inconsistency, as some functions remain “for life” even today. That is the other extreme and may be a bit too much.
As pension ages are on the rise worldwide, this trend should at the very least be reflected in statutes and regulations setting age requirements for government-owned companies and other (semi)public sector entities. Rules not regularly revised and adjusted where needed can in many cases quickly become outdated and downright old-fashioned.
