1.1 Introduction
Civil Servant Retirement is the withdrawal or giving up office or work. According to Nwajagu (2007), a person who had retired is a person who had stop working in the office. The Oxford Dictionary defined retirement as the act of stopping ones regular work especially because one has reached a particular age; the even of retiring or state of having retired from work. Nwajagu (2007) defined three ways of civil or public servant may retire or give up his office. They are voluntary retirement; statutory retirement and Compulsory retirement. By status on attaining the age of sixty years chronologically one is bound to retire or on completing thirty-five years in the service one is similarly qualified to retire from the service. Statutory retirement attracts payment of gratuity and pension. Voluntary retirement is self-imposed.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
In Nigeria, statutory working age in the public service is fixed at sixty (60) years or thirty five (35) years of unbroken active working service before retirement. However, the Retirement Age Harmonization Act of 2012 puts the retirement age of judicial officers and academic staff of tertiary institutions at 70 and 65 years respectively because of the belief that the “older , the wiser” in those sectors. In the private sector, retirement age varies between 55 and 60 years of service and the factor of 35 years of service is not applicable (FGN, 2008). Other less measurable retirement criteria such as low productivity, divided interest, labour redundancy, rationalization etc. are often introduced and these have exacerbated the already negative attitude the Nigerian workers have for retirement. Recent studies (Glenn, 2005) have shown that labour in private and public sectors are noted for their significant contributions to socio-economic development in Nigeria. Globally, government recognizes that between the service years and retirement, workers are considered most energetic and useful as their labor time are spent for their employer(s). As a reward for their significant and contribution to the economy, government in both developed and developing countries provide retirees access to formal system of retirement income support . In Nigeria, its popularly called employee benefits in the form of pension and gratuity as a reward for workers meritorious service to the nation. According to Kolawole and Mallum (2004) retirement pension is typically one of the largest social security component of public interventions for the retired public civil servants.
Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours. An increasing number of individuals are choosing to put off this point of total retirement, by selecting to exist in the emerging state of Pre-tirement. Many people choose to retire when they are eligible for private or public pension benefits, although some are forced to retire when physical conditions no longer allow the person to work any longer (by illness or accident).
Prospects in the service are considered and where one is not satisfied with the career or one lacks job satisfaction such person is at liberty to retire voluntarily. The sang in voluntary retirement is that where the retires has not worked for a minimum of ten years, he forfeits his gratuity and pension but if he has put in fifteen years in the service, he becomes entitled to payment of gratuity and pension.
1.3 Statement of Problem
The manual Civil Servant Retirement System have a number of problems such as too much paper work, lack of efficiency, too many redundant staff, lack of computer peripherals/devices, financial misappropriation (corruption), lack of confidentiality of information, lack of fund delivery to the state/federation’s account, adherence to unnecessary protocol and tradition, lack of data integrity, lack of professionalism system etc., which requires a development of an online Civil Servant Retirement System. The above problems are going to be resolve when the new system is fully developed.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study
The aim of the study is to Design and Implement of Civil Servant Retirement System. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to design and develop an application software that will:
- Automate retirement benefit generating system to help ease collection system
- Create an online application for the current system
- Test and validate the new system
- Scrutinize the current retirement system and processes
- Ensure that the service commissions will always have a stand by record of its entire staff installed in its computers for easy access and use for promotion.
1.5 Significance of Study
The relevance of this project is assessed in the following:
- It will reduce the physical storage space required to record valuable information, such as; wall drop, cardboard, high notes, etc.
- It will make it possible and even easy to track information about employee, basically; how many years remain for individual to retired, how long did she/he works, and also it provides an easy way to generate benefits/bonuses of an individual
1.6 Scope of Study
The study focuses on the Design and Implementation of Civil Servant Retirement System.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definition of Terms
Computer: A computer is an electronic machine that is capable of solving problems by accepting data, performing prescribed operation on the data accepting and supply the result of those operations.
Data: They are values, numbers, quantities or instruction by the computer user. Data are raw facts or figure that are not yet processed.
Database: a structured set of data held in a computer, especially one that is accessible in various ways.
Employment: the state of having paid work.
Civil Servant: a person employed for wages or salary, especially at non-executive level.
Information: It is the result of processing data
Performance Appraisal: PA is the activity, which enables systematic identification of job-related strengths and weaknesses among individual Civil Servants and between Civil Servant groups.
Personnel: It is a department in a firm, which deals with Civil Servants.
Management: It is the co-ordination of all the resources of an organization through the process of planning, organization, directing and controlling in order to attain organizational objectives.
Public Sector: The industries and services that are owned and run by the government.
Private Sector: The industries and services that are owned and run by private companies and not by the state or government.
Performance: The amount of useful work accomplished by a computer system compared to the time and resources used or when more work is accomplished in shorter time.
Processing: Is the series of things that need to be done in achieving a particular result.
Resource: a stock or supply of money, materials, staff, and other assets that can be drawn on by a person or organization in order to function effectively.
