Minister of Youth, Kaschaka Cupid says keeping public servants in their posts after they reach retirement age can delay opportunities for younger Vincentians.
He said that better succession planning is needed to prevent vacancies from becoming a bottleneck.
Speaking on New Times recently, Cupid who was elected to office in November 2025, noted that he had spent more than two decades in the public service before entering politics.
The West St. George MP, who is also minister of sports, culture, and creative industries, said his experience had helped him understand how government systems operate, including their staffing constraints.
He said youth unemployment was a particular concern for him as minister of youth, and described hearing from young people seeking work in his constituency.
“Just this morning … a number of young persons came, and they expressed their concern, their challenges not being employed in any meaningful way,” Cupid said.
He argued that extending the employment of people who have reached retirement age can make it harder for younger workers to move into available posts.
“When persons attain the retirement age, and they’re extended for like a year or even two, it creates a significant bottleneck in the system, and the youths who are unemployed, they are the ones who suffer as a result,” he said.
Cupid said he understood that some roles require continuity, particularly where specialist expertise is involved.
He, however, argued that continuity should be planned for before a senior employee leaves, rather than addressed by extending their service or scrambling to fill the position afterwards.
“I believe once you would have attained the retirement age and your field is fairly unique, I could understand the need to create some level of continuity,” he said. “But we need to plan for that level of continuity too.”
As an example, he referred to technical roles such as information technology, saying an organisation should identify and prepare a successor while an experienced employee is still in post.
The minister suggested that this would allow the successor to learn from the departing employee and help maintain services.
“So that when John gets the retirement age… there’s no scrambling to fill the post,” Cupid said.
London noted that public service regulations make provision for some employees to continue working after retirement age.
Cupid acknowledged that point, while maintaining that extensions should be considered alongside workforce planning and the effect on younger job-seekers.
He also linked the issue to broader structural challenges in the public service, saying government and private-sector workplaces “function completely differently” and that parts of the public service would need “a level of restructuring for the better”.
Cupid said the issue was one of several challenges confronting the year-old New Democratic Party administration, while adding that changes would take time.
He attributed the lack of succession planning to the Unity Labour Party administration, which was voted out of office in November 2025, months shy of a quarter century in office.