Forum: Do more to get retirees back in workforce

I refer to the report “

Tap older workers’ wealth of experience

” (Dec 11). Much has been said about the availability of manpower from the retired workforce, but this seems to have been accorded low priority.

I am in a chat group consisting of 44 healthy retirees, who were qualified professionals in the fields of financial service, education and engineering.

Their lives now revolve around running errands and exchanging gossip. This indeed is a waste of valuable talent and wealth of experiences, which could otherwise be channelled back more productively to the economy.

There is an opportunity for us to explore the untapped talent among retirees, and institutionalise their return to the workforce.

Employers should change their mindset that the cost of hiring these retirees would be a prohibitive factor.

I believe the retirees would be reasonable on remunerations, and some might even regard it as answering the call to help ease the nation’s manpower crunch.

Ong Kim Bock