Male bus drivers can retire early

The city's male bus drivers now have the choice of opting for early retirement at the age of 55, five years ahead of their age of retirement, if they are found to have certain health risks, extremely high blood pressure or heart disease in particular, according to a new policy.

While specifics of the policy, or when it takes effect, were not released Sunday by local officials, He Fang, a press officer for Ba-Shi Public Transportation Group, responsible for a majority of the city's 28,428 bus drivers, said that bus drivers are "getting the message."

"The option of early retirement is up to them," he told the Global Times Sunday, but declined to provide further details.

Proposed by Shanghai People's Congress delegate Sun Honglin during this year's Two Sessions meetings last month, the new policy has been accepted by local authorities after dozens of passengers were saved from road accidents when two bus drivers suffered brain hemorrhages while driving last year. In both cases, the drivers managed to pull over to safety before losing consciousness. Eight other similar cases have been reported in the past two years.

Sun said that since bus drivers are subject to a labor-intensive job with a lot of mental stress, male drivers, whose retirement age is set 10 years later than female bus drivers, tend to suffer from poor eyesight, high blood pressure and heart disease before 60.

"The public's safety can be protected if drivers are driving under safe conditions," he wrote in his proposal.

His argument was backed by research conducted two years ago by local transportation labor union authorities, which showed that 86.95 percent of the city's 465 bus drivers older than 55 suffered various health problems - prompting Ba-Shi to switch senior drivers and those with health risks to less busier routes.

Still, most senior drivers prefer to work until the uniform age of retirement, according to Chen Qiang, head of Ba-Shi's No.121 bus route.

"Only drivers who are really too sick to drive want early retirement," he told the Global Times Sunday.

Bus drivers who opt for early retirement are unlikely to receive much more than 2,000 yuan ($318) from a monthly pension, while those who work until 60 can earn roughly double the income, he said.

A 58-year-old male bus driver from Ba-Shi, who asked not to be named, told the Global Times Sunday that he plans on driving for two more years since he can "still bear the pressures of his job."