Early Retirement in Tunisia to Create Job Opportunities

By Jamel Arfaoui, Magharebia

July 7, 2009

Tunisia

In an attempt to fight against unemployment in Tunisia, the parliament on June 30th put forward a new law that would allow early retirement for public employees and free up jobs for young people.

Existing laws require employees to reach the age of 60 before qualifying for retirement benefits, except in cases of chronic illness or physical handicap. The new regulations would allow employees to retire three years earlier.

"It caters to the Tunisian administration's needs of skilful resources in order to ensure the development of performance on one hand, and solve the employment problem for university degree holders on the other," said Zohair Modhaffer, Minister-Delegate with the Prime Minister's Office in charge of Civil Service and Administrative Development.

Modhaffer noted 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 January 1st, 2010 through December 31st, 2012. It would be voluntary, "so that the Tunisian administration will not be short of qualified resources."

According to official data, unemployment ranges between 13% and 14%. The government has launched several initiatives to solve the problem, especially among fresh university graduates. It offered bank loans to help the unemployed launch small businesses, assigned weekly meetings with business owners to discuss proposals and initiatives in addition to hundreds of recruitment offices around the country.

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

The early retirement initiative is not new to Tunisia, said Naima Kadri, a reporter specialising in employment issues. It is already effective in commercial and industrial sectors like telecommunications, post, railroads, airlines and freight.

"Such institutions adopted the early retirement scheme to bring youthful resources into their institutions and introduce new professional skills that are required by technological advancement and the new requirements of the labour market," Kadri said.

People like Sami Haddad, who received a master's degree in economics in 2006 and is still unemployed, welcomed the new law. "It brings new hopes of kissing unemployment goodbye," he said.

"I believe this is an important step that partially solves the problem of unemployment of the university graduates, though I do not think it will solve the whole problem," said Fethi Ayari, an official at the Centre of Research and Studies, which is an affiliate of the Tunisian General Union of Labour.

Ayari said that in order to solve the problem on a wider scale, the union insists on its previous proposal to create an unemployment insurance fund that would pay unemployment benefits to those in need. Tunisia would not be the pioneer, Ayari said; Algeria already pays these benefits.

Tunisian authorities have rejected this proposal before, Ayari added, out of fear that "the fund would encourage dependence."

It is difficult to give an exact number of how many employees will be interested in early retirement under the new law. But Tahar Ayadi, 58, said he is willing to take the offer "as long as it is a step that will offer an opportunity to unemployed young people."

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