There are youths with sev­er­al de­grees—from Mas­ters to PhDs—who can­not get jobs, but Gov­ern­ment may be bring­ing peo­ple back to work un­til age 65 af­ter they planned to re­tire at age 60, Op­po­si­tion MP Sad­dam Ho­sein says.

Ho­sein made the claim at yes­ter­day’s Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence, where he not­ed the re­cent re­port that Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert said the pro­pos­al to in­crease the re­tire­ment age from 60 to 65 years was un­der “ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion” but the Gov­ern­ment hadn’t made a firm de­ci­sion on the mat­ter yet.

But Ho­sein said any in­crease of the re­tire­ment age to 65 will wreak hav­oc on the lives of peo­ple who had planned to re­tire at 60, made their Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) con­tri­bu­tions and planned their lives in an­tic­i­pa­tion of their pen­sions. Plus, he said, it could af­fect them at a time when med­ical bills may be mount­ing.

Ho­sein said Im­bert had a du­ty to ac­count to the Par­lia­ment on why the NIB’s 2020/21 an­nu­al re­ports have not been pre­sent­ed. He said this would con­tain in­for­ma­tion on the num­ber of NIB con­trib­u­tors and ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

He said a court claim was yes­ter­day grant­ed for ju­di­cial re­view for Im­bert to ex­plain the fail­ure to lay the re­ports.

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip David Lee ques­tioned if the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny’s $2.1 bil­lion loss—which he said was an in­dict­ment on Gov­ern­ment—was due to bad ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“It was the first time it’s made a mas­sive loss. NGC should nev­er be in loss­es. They’re the mid­dle man - buy­ing gas from up stream­ers, sell­ing to down stream­ers. This loss would have built up from de­ci­sions, con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments and man­age­ment. Are we now get­ting the out­come of the 2017 ne­go­ti­a­tions Gov­ern­ment did in Hous­ton?”

Lee not­ed Gov­ern­ment’s new re­quest for pro­pos­als for bids for the Guaracara re­fin­ery, which left Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies out again, not­ing the Op­po­si­tion had warned Gov­ern­ment was “us­ing OW­TU” in the lead-up to 2020 elec­tions.