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Singapore is sitting on a demographic time bomb. According to UN projections, nearly half (47 percent) of the country's population will be at least age 65 by 2050 and the median age is expected to grow from 40 years old in 2015 to 52.8 years old by 2050. Singapore's aging workforce, coupled with the ultra-low birth rate of 1.2 children per woman, means that an increasing number of employers now need to keep their senior employees around for longer. To combat this "profound" problem, as described by the country's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the government enacted the Retirement and Re-employment Act (RRA) in 2012 and revised it in 2017 to expand the covered group. Under the RRA, once an employee reaches retirement age, an employer has the following three options:
* Offer re-employment to the employee.
* Transfer the re-employment obligations to another employer.
* Offer a one-off Employment Assistance Payment (EAP) to the employee.
Re-Employment
The RRA, as revised in 2017, requires employers to provide eligible employees with re-employment when the employee reaches the statutory retirement age of 62 and up to age 67.
In order to be eligible, an employee must: (1) be medically fit to continue working; (2) have...