CARING FOR THE AGED

The announcement by the Minister of Social Development, Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, during the Budget debate in the Senate that Government was establishing a national policy on ageing, and that homes for the aged would be monitored, is welcome news for the aged and their families.

Abdul-Hamid cautioned that the aged as a percentage of the country’s population was increasing, and was expected to be 12 percent by 2010, mounting to 43 percent by 2050. The reality is that should this happen, then by the middle of this century a sharply reduced percentage of the population would be required both to take care of aging parents and/or relatives, and to fund social services for the old generally. Any development of Government policy on ageing should not simply focus on the care aspect, nor for that matter on an increase in old age pensions. Instead, Government should encourage workers and their employers, where this is relevant, to establish pension funds and employee stock ownership funds, as a hedge against old age. In addition, it should facilitate savings by young people, as well as investments by them in mutual funds and the purchase of shares on the stock exchange. The projected National Health Insurance Plan will assist residents greatly on their retirement. What is crucial is that citizens, who toiled long and hard in the vineyard in their productive years, putting their children through school, secondary and/or tertiary, and helped by way of taxes and/or their jobs to assist in the development of Trinidad and Tobago should not find themselves neglected in their old age.

The plan to have the Social Development Ministry’s Division of Ageing, now being established, monitor homes for the aged, have them licensed, inspected and standards set for them, should contribute to lessening the all too often negative aspects of the treatment of the old. Today, all too many of the homes for the aged offer sub standard care for the old, and in some instances the treatment of the patients is indifferent, bordering on the callous. And to add to the hurt of dismissal of their concerns is the fact that close relatives, including their children, sometimes hardly turn up to visit them. They become the forgotten senior citizens of society, treated almost as nuisances, or with patronising contempt. Advances in medical science over the years have been the main contributory factors to persons of this generation living longer than say individuals in the early part of the last century. Tuberculosis, whooping cough, pneumonia, diptheria, measles and typhoid, which were responsible for the majority of deaths among young people several decades ago, are no longer the terrors they once were.

The development of penicillin, aureomycin, izoniazid, streptomycin and the Salk vaccines and other infection fighting drugs has, in reducing the threat of unnecessary early deaths, including those of countless infants, increased the prospects of persons living well beyond retirement age. The tragedy, however, is that many of the country’s elder citizens, live on marginal incomes, the result of a combination of earlier low wages; relatively low pensions and an absence of meaningful savings and/or investments. A troubling factor has been the constantly rising cost of living, which has slashed the purchasing power of whatever pensions retirees receive. The work force, trade unions and the Government will have to come up with solutions that will effectively reduce the prospect of 43 percent of Trinidad and Tobago’s population being a burden on the national purse by 2050.