New retirement policy displays human touch

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and two other departments jointly issued an interim guideline on Wednesday, allowing workers to choose their retirement age.

Rather than being mandatory, the guideline gives people the option of choosing from a flexible range of three years, before or after the retirement age, when to retire.

Some also negatively portrayed the minimum contribution period for pensions as having been raised from 15 to 20 years. However, this adjustment will be gradually implemented starting from 2030. That means, for all those who are retiring anytime in the period from 2025 to 2029, the requirement for the minimum contribution period remains unchanged at 15 years. Workers who have already completed or are close to completing 15 years of contributions will not be affected.