Help the elderly

Ninety nine percent of the vote you got to put you in office were from the pensioners. Now we are being treated like aliens.

The last budget we thought you would have at least considered the cost of living in this country. You are the Prime Minister and you know that $1000.00 can’t take you through a month with grocery, bills, market, electricity bill, phone bill, name it, we have to pay 15 percent tax on everything we purchase.

A Minister once said he can’t live on $2000.00 a week. We old age pensioners are given $1000.00 a month and as though we are begging for it. Consider us in your next budget, giving us a reasonable increase.

We do not have any trade union to ask for us, but something can be worked out. Another issue that is bothering us is the four-month time given to us, to go out of the country, if you don’t return within that period, they will stop your petty allowance of $1000 that we depend on to exist.

For instance $1000.00 can’t pay medical bills here in Trinidad and Tobago. A friend, family, or somebody is willing to pay your medical bills for you in a foreign country, say the USA or Canada, how possible it is to be attending doctors, given appointment dates within four months, is it practical? You have to be back home within four months. OK you might have children away that you struggled to support, send them to school, to obtain a good education and they are working abroad.

They want to return thanks to you by paying all expenses for you to visit them for a holiday. You can’t stay more than four months else we lose the little pittance they offering us. Mr Prime Minister, think soberly, do the old-age pensioners deserve this kind of treatment from a caring government in which you are the chief. Think again my Prime Minister, change that four-month period given to us to stay away, to a longer time, six months. Is this too much to ask of you?