As more and more governmental financial institutions and services are privatised, more and more civil servants are politely asked or forced to take early retirement. Those who've spent at least 20 years in public service are wisely advised to quit and receive a pension plus an average of the bonuses and allowances they've collected over the past two decades.
Public-sector banking employees have been seriously affected by the recent mergers and selling off of public banks. “I was surprised when the board chairman of the public-sector bank I worked for said that workers over 40 years must apply for early retirement. We were told we would receive a golden handshake of between LE30,000 [$5,500] and LE200,000 [$37,000], depending on our final salaries,” says an employee speaking on condition of anonymity. "He gave us a grace period of one week."He definitely fell into the over-40 category, having loyally served the bank for 36 years.He claims that the grace period was accompanied by indirect threats. He was told that if he didn't accept early retirement, he'd have to sit foreign language and computer exams, while he'd be transferred to another branch faraway from Cairo, where young members of staff of the same age as his children would be bossing him around.In other governmental institutions, it's a similar story. A 48-year-old widow says she was tricked into early retirement. “I used to get paid LE800 per month plus an extra LE4,000 per annum as a share of the company's profits. But I agreed to early retirement and now only collect LE230 per month. As for the golden handshake of LE30,000, it all went on paying off a few debts and helping my daughter with her wedding expenses,” says this mother-of-three, also preferring anonymity. Paradoxically, the Social Insurance and Pension Authority (responsible for both the private and public sectors) doesn't really want people to take early retirement. “If people retire early, it costs us a lot of money. At the same time, people who retire early soon fritter away their golden handshake, then have to start looking for another job,” Talaat Ismail, Chairman of the Authority, told the semi-official newspaper Al-Ahram."I would advise someone who's spent for example 15 years [i.e. less than 20 years] in service and wants to retire early, because they're not satisfied with the changes and new management policies, to 'buy the other five years',” added the official."By this I mean that an employee can pay the insurance for the remaining five years, in another words the money that would have been deducted from his salary every month if he'd stayed for 20 years. That means he gets the golden handshake and his full pension," he explained, adding that around 450,000 civil servants have already accepted early retirement.
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