ABSTRACT
The
study examined the Influence of Age Falsification on Adjustment of Teacher
Retirees in Nsukka Education Zone, Enugu State. Ex-post-facto research design
was adopted for the study .A sample of 125 teacher retirees was randomly
selected from 257 teacher retirees in Nsukka Education Zone. The study was
guided by four research questions and two hypotheses. Influence of Age
Falsification on Adjustment of Teacher Retirees Questionnaire (IAFATRQ) was
used for data collection. To ensure the validity of the instrument, the
instrument was subjected to face validation by three experts, two from the
Department of Science Education and one from Educational Foundations. The
reliability index of 0.89 was obtained. The data generated from the study were
analyzed using mean and standard deviation. The result of the study showed that
gender was not a significant factor on age falsification and psychological
adjustment of teacher retirees. The findings also showed that gender influences
age falsification and social adjustment of male and female teacher retirees.
The findings further reveled that gender was not a significant factor on age
falsification and economic adjustment of teacher retirees. Based on the.
findings, recommendations were made which included that government should pay
the retirees their benefits immediately after retirement without stress, for
this will encourage them not to have negative mind towards retirement.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Retirement refers to the period of one’s life after the person has
stopped work at a particular age. Stonier (2004) defined retirement as
withdrawal from office or official position or to give up one’s business or
occupation. Olusakin (2001) defines retirement as a situation in which a person
leaves a job he has been used to in order to face another stage in life whereby
he now settles down to establish his own private business or job which he does
at his own convenience. In this context, retirement is a period of change in
one’s life which could be enjoyable for some people and frustrating for others.
However, this is dependent on the way the person involved sees this situation.
So, while some retirees acknowledge that retirement is reducing the number of work
hours, from full time to part time, some others see it as working on a
voluntary basis or ceasing from all work activities paid or unpaid.
Retirement is of two major types. These are voluntary and mandatory
retirements. Voluntary retirement according to Omeje (2002), is a situation
whereby the retiree feels like resting after some years in service while the
mandatory retirement is the type stipulated by government policy for all civil
servants with emphasis on age limit and years of service, whichever one any
intending teacher retiree is involved, it needs proper preparation ahead of
this change in life. In developed countries of the world, a worker has to
sometimes make material, social and psychological preparations as he approaches retirement,
unlike in developing countries like Nigeria where little or no preparations are
made (Nwafor, 2002).
In Nigeria, some of the workers especially the teachers had no
pre-knowledge of what retirement entails and because of this, some tend to
undertake voluntary retirement. Some who are aware of the difficulties
associated with retirement, like delays in processing and payment of retirement
benefits, try to avert retirement; hence, according to Jarvis (2006), as a
result of the inability of the tiers of the government to implement enabling
legislation on retirees’ pension, the serving civil servants resort to
falsification of age. In the same context, Ochiagha (1999) asserts that
teachers and other civil servants falsify their age to avert impending frustration,
anxiety, fear, low esteem and penury arising from retirement. Falsification by
Grangaard (2000) is the action of falsifying information or a theory or the act
of producing something that lacks authenticity with the intent to commit fraud.
Consequently, age falsification involves the fraudulent altering of one’s age.
In the word of Idowu (1988) age falsification is the act of altering documents
regarding to one’s age fraudulently to avoid being retired. Similarly, Nwafor
(2002) asserts that falsification of real age in variance with biological age
has become a disturbing phenomenon. According to Amina (2008), it becomes more
glaring when one considers the fact that those who are supposed to be preparing
for their retirement falsify their age with impunity and waste away in office.
According to Ani (2000), these particular set of workers are always young on paper but appear old and
weak. All these as stated earlier are aimed at avoiding the hardships retirees
experience in our society today.
For instance, the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) in her bulletin of
March, 1994 exposed how retired teachers experience hardship, anxiety, income
problems and other pathetic conditions on retirement. The effect of this is
that those who are yet to retire use every means available to carry out
falsification of record of their age, records of service and sometimes plead
with and bribe the officers responsible for retirement matters not to enlist
them among those due to retire. It is alleged that most teachers feel very
uncomfortable when getting close to retirement as they have to wait for a long
time under various hardships before receiving their retirement benefits (Eyaro,
2005).
Retirees are expected to adjust to these prevailing circumstances but
they fail to do so due to long stay in service resulting from falsification of
records and age. Adjustment in this context involves one’s struggle to get
along or survive in his social environment. Lazarus (2003) sees adjustment as a
man’s efforts successfully or unsuccessfully to deal with life in the face of
environmental demands. This change in environment therefore becomes
instrumental to adjustment. Consequently, this involves psychological, social,
economic and health adjustments.
Psychological adjustment involves the way retirees relate with people
around their environment and their feelings about life before their retirement.
According to Kelves (2000), psychological adjustment refers to how
retirees relate well with people around them, thinking and communicating
positively about life after service. A well socially adjusted retiree is one
that relates well with his family, enjoys and cherishes any support given to
him, sees himself as somebody who would contribute to the development of his
community and ready to take leadership role among his kinsmen at retirement.
On the other hand, a well economically adjusted teacher retiree is
normally one who planned well ahead of retirement by way of savings and putting
in place income generating investments or ventures before retirement. It is
obvious that a serving teacher who leaves the service healthy and vibrant would
achieve a well and balanced adjustment to the challenges of retirement life.
However, it is worrisome that many of them play games as retirement approaches.
In Nsukka Education Zone, it is observed that there is large number of
retirees and majority of these teacher retirees look so devastated and aged
shortly after retirement from the service. On the other hand, some do not look
healthy enough as to engage in other businesses to support life, while some
cease to communicate freely with neighbours and withdraw completely from
attending social activities. Worse still, many suffer high blood pressure,
stroke or other related diseases and die shortly after their retirement to the
extent that people around begin to wonder what their problem might be.
It is pertinent to note that age and records falsification by primary
school teachers and their attendant effects are not restricted to only male
teachers or to the females. Both sides participate freely in this act while there is no
parity in their psychological and economic adjustments. This study will also
look at gender differences of teachers’ age falsification and psychological
adjustment. Gender is a range of characteristic used to distinguish between
male and female, particularly in the cases of men and women, masculine and
feminine attributes assigned to them. Gender is a social construct, it is not biologically
determined but a concept equivalent to race or class (Offorma, 2004). This
definition suggests that gender is socially or culturally constructed
characteristics and role, which are associated with males and females in
society. It is different from sex which is a biological distinction in
appearance (morphology) and function (physiology) as well as reproductive
contributions of men and women. According to Lee (2001) gender is ascribed
attribute that differentiates feminine from masculine......
================================================================
Item Type: Project Material | Attribute: 63 pages | Chapters: 1-5
Format: MS Word | Price: N3,000 | Delivery: Within 30Mins.
================================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment