Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs will implement a plan this year to engage the youth as assistants to managers in state-run organizations, said an official with the ministry.
“The ministry is finalizing the practical ways to implement the (young managers) plan before the end of current fiscal (March 2018),” deputy in charge of youth affairs, Mohammad-Reza Rostami said. He urged non-profit organizations active in the area to cooperate with the ministry in this regard, Mehr News Agency reported.
The plan ‘Young State Assistant ‘ was first introduced two years ago as part of the government’s intention to lower the average age of managers working in executive organizations.
Accordingly, the scheme proposed that managers in all state-run executive bodies should each hire two young assistants to facilitate the process of transferring knowledge and expertise to future generations.
Last month Rostami said 2,000 eligible youth had been identified to take part in the scheme, without elaborating on the criteria for selection of the young managers.
A regulation passed by the Supreme Administrative Council on June 1, 2015 specifies the criteria for selection of eligible staff to serve as expert assistants in executive bodies, among them: a postgraduate degree in relevant majors with minimum passing grade of 16/20, fluency in one foreign language, age than 40 years and a high rank in the national university entrance test (konkur).
Involving the youth in decision-making and appointing them to senior managerial positions has been a part of the plan of action of the previous and current Rouhani administrations.
In line with this policy, the SAC recently passed a new executive order banning the promotion of state employees with more than 25 years of experience or those over 55 years old to top managerial posts.
The new amendment also lowers the bar for minimum experience required for executive, lower, middle and top level managerial posts to two-thirds of the current level.
According to the ruling, the average age of managers in state organizations is to be reduced by eight years from its current level by the end of the Sixth Five-Year Economic, Social and Cultural Development Plan (2017-22).
Aging Cabinet
The high average age of those occupying top government positions in Iran has been repeatedly questioned by experts. A report last month by Persian-language daily, Shargh, indicated that the average age of Cabinet members has been constantly increasing during successive administrations.
According to the report, in the 12 administrations since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the average age of cabinet members has grown by almost 19 years, reaching a peak during the 11th administration (President Rouhani’s first term in office) when the average age was about 61. President Rouhani’s Cabinet in his second term, which began this year, has an average age of 58, still much higher than the country’s average age of 31.1 years.
The gap between average age of decision and policy makers and the rest of the population is a worrying fact, worsened by Iran’s ageing population.
Demographical statistics show that Iran’s population is rapidly ageing and the working-age population is shrinking. The latest national census showed that the average age of Iranians increased during the five years between 2011 and 2016 by 1.3 years to 31.1.
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