Caring for our elders


Stabroek News
January 28, 2000


The distribution of old age pension books and, by extension, the encashment of vouchers were twice delayed. Senior citizens stood in line for hours at post offices before they could receive the pittance social services metes out to them.

The Ministry of Human Services and Social Security had first announced that the pension books would have been available on January 17. Then pensioners were told January 20. Many pensioners did not actually receive their year 2000 pension books until the next day.

Post offices were overrun by anxious old people. Some of them had begun to queue up outside more than an hour before the post offices opened. Having a single teller designated to hand out pension books did not help. Very old people, some of whom were already suffering from various chronic ailments--hypertension, arthritis, heart problems--began to feel ill. This is a sorry picture. It is inappropriate.

Our seniors should not be made to feel that they are begging for what the state has decided that it owes to them. There ought to be a less crude way of doing this. Some young brain at the Human Services Ministry should devise a system that would see the elderly receive their pensions in a manner that allows them to maintain their dignity.

The old age pension, small though it is, is looked forward to by some senior citizens for whom it is their only source of income. These older folks might not have been employed formally and are therefore precluded from drawing pensions from the National Insurance Scheme or an employer. Those who worked as private maids, handymen, gardeners, cooks and in similar jobs, would not have had the opportunity to set aside anything from their meagre wages for their old age.

Some of these elderly people are caring for grandchildren, because their children have gone abroad in search of a better life, died or become drug addicts. Others are either alone in the world, or have been cast out by their children and already feel hopeless, unwanted and unloved. The harsh language and scornful looks they receive from some postal employees only serve to rub it in.

A generation ago, seniors were a part of almost every home in Guyana as well as a significant number of gentlewomen who never married because they were caring for an old aunt, mother, father. In this generation nuclear families are the order of the day. Society must deal with the fall out from this and in a responsible way. How we treat the aged says a lot about us as a society. And it would serve us well to remember that the decisions we make today will determine how we are treated tomorrow.


A © page from:
Guyana: Land of Six Peoples