Fawwaz Aziz Al-Watan With a majority of only three votes, the Shoura Council has approved a proposal to discuss raising the age of retirement in the Kingdom to 62 years instead of the present 60. As many as 59 members voted “yes” to the proposal, while 56 voted against it. I know very well that the supporters of the proposal believe that the current age of retirement is not commensurate with the advanced level of healthcare, which has prolonged the life expectancy of citizens. However, I would like to ask the supporters a simple question: Why didn't you think of the unemployment rate among Saudi youths? Do you know that the Ministry of Education is attempting to create about 40,000 jobs to female university graduates through putting women teachers to early retirement under a program called 25 plus 6? The ministry has suggested to the women teachers who have worked for 25 years to step down on early retirement and said it will add six years to their service period to make it 31 years. Do those who support the raising of the retirement age know that we have more than 500,000 jobless female university graduates and that the number is going up every year? I wish the council had, instead, voted on more important issues such as reducing the age of retirement for women so that they can go back to their homes and families opening the doors at the same time for the employment of other jobless women. The supporters may have a sound point if half of our society is not composed of young men and women and that unemployment among the youth has reached high levels. If I had known the address of Hussam Al-Anqari, who presented the proposal, I would have gone to him with a number of journalists to try to make him withdraw his proposal. If I had known the mobile phone numbers of the supporters I would have flooded them with text messages about the Prophet's (peace be upon him) Hadith that says: “The average age of my nation is between 60 and 70 years”. I would have also sent them the cartoon made by Abdullah Sayel showing an old man clinging to his chair refusing to give it to a young man behind him. An innocent question: How old are the council's members who voted to increase the age of retirement?
