Retirement Age and Rehiring as a Consultant - want to make a policy on employee retirement for private port staff based in Maharashtra

Dear HR ,
I want to make a policy on employee retirement for private port staff based in Maharashtra. Want to know the below points
1) What is the Retirement Age for Port Staff working in the Field
2) For how many years can we extend their retirement by looking at the physical & mental condition of the employee
3) Can we take the port field staff in a consultant role? if yes, then what will be the maximum age for a consultant?
Kindly help me solve my above queries.

Normally there is no age restriction for any kind of employees in a private establishment. However, in order to bring a uniform pattern for all the employees, companies follow some retirement age. It may be 58 or 60. There can also be a provision in the policy that depending upon the requirements, the retirement age of an employee shall be extended. There also we need to have a uniformity to approach so that antagonism against an employee or a particular class of employees should not be established. It is very common that the management would never extend the retirement of a worker who has been actively involved in trade union or who has always been against the management. Similarly, there should not be an incident that an employee who has had a very bad attendance record demanding extension of retirement age. Therefore, the policy should give the management only the right to decide whether one employee should be given extension or not.

An employee can be given service extension with all service benefits. There issue no issue in it. But when you do it, the payment of retirement benefits like Gratuity will be postponed but the amount of gratuity would increase because it would be calculated considering the length of service after the retirement also. Therefore, it is common to settle the gratuity, leave surrender etc on the date of superannuation itself and rehire the employee as a fresh employee.

There is no need to rehire an employee as 'consultant'. A consultant is one who is giving professional service. A worker will not give any professional service to you. Moreover, a consultant will not come to your plant every day and remain there like other workers. He will not mark his attendance nor would apply for leave when he requires an absence from work. Therefore, you should not rehire a worker as a consultant. But you can give him an employment with all statutory benefits for a fixed period, say two years. By statutory benefits, I mean salary not less than the statutory minimum fixed by the government, ESI, if the wages is less than Rs 21000, leave with wages and other benefits. If he is in receipt of Pension from the EPF, he can be excluded from PF.