Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/ ANKARA: Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, abolished a retirement age requirement in a move that allows more than 2 million Turkish workers to retire immediately, less than six months before the election.
According to Reuters, the announcement has made during a news conference and follows Tayyip ruling AK Party delivering a hefty hike to the minimum wage last week as part of the campaign to win back voter support eroded by inflation, fall in the lira, and a sharp drop in living standards.
Retirement Requirement Changed
A new arrangement could benefit people who started working before September 1999, when the law regulating retirement requirements changed, and who have completed 20-25 years of social security-registered working life.
Previously, the retirement age was 58 years for women and 60 for men.
Labour and Social Security Minister Vedat Bilgin said that the new system would cost over 100 billion lira.
Bilgin said, “We don’t know how much more than 100 billion lira the new system will cost because we don’t know how many people could immediately decide to retire under the new system,” speaking on state broadcaster TRT Haber.
Erdogan earlier said that 2.25 million people were eligible to retire immediately. There have currently 13.9 million pensioners in Turkey.
Labour groups had been protesting a minimum age requirement for several years, asking that instead, workers should just be required to complete the mandatory number of work days to retire. The move has seen as giving a boost to Erdogan before a critical election due in June.
