Ideas for embracing the elderly in national development

Oct 29, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The month of the elderly for 2016 will end shortly. Every year the government of Guyana has by its statements make it clear what it thinks of the elderly. Last year Minister Volda Lawrence promised them a modern Archer home; this year she added to this her hope the elderly will have a raise in their pension in 2017 “God willing” (in other words, if the raise does not materialize, no fault of the government, blame God!). For the government it seems concern for the material need of the elderly is all that matters.
When I speak of improving the lives of the elderly I am not thinking of how many more of them government and non – government agencies have been able to house, clothe and feed since the previous year’s celebration. For me those are basic human material needs and basic needs therefore comprise basic human rights.
I am thinking about opportunities that have been created allowing the elderly to live full lives – contributing to national development as they desire and as their skills and abilities would allow them. To date no government in the history of Guyana has ever offered a policy for involving the elderly in national development. Governments have often tried to distract from this neglect by initiating not well thought out activities, such as involving a few members of this community in one form of craft work or another; work essentially organized to keep them busy, that offers little psychological satisfaction and of no significance to the national economy.
Public policy is by definition “a general plan of action adopted by a government to solve a social problem, counter a threat, or pursue an objective.” So we have a sports policy, a youth policy etc. When government offers no policy as it relates to a specific group, the analyst cannot be considered unreasonable to conclude government has chosen to maintain the status quo. All governments that Guyana has known thus far in her history, based on their behaviour, give the impression of not crediting the elderly with needs other than those basic material needs mentioned above. It is as though there is a feeling that with age the elderly somehow no longer have other needs.
The ridiculousness of this omission of a policy for involving the elderly in national development can fully be appreciated when one recognizes that in Guyana the bulk of knowledge and skills reside with the elderly. So let us examine some of the ways the elderly can best be embraced in our development efforts.
First, I would argue that the bulk of the civil service should be made up of healthy, knowledgeable persons from the elderly community. As Guyana slowly perhaps, but never-the-less surely moves into the technological age work in the public service is becoming even more routine and easy to complete. Computers and printers have taken away the need to tediously sift through cabinets, dust old files and manually print needed forms. All this is done in seconds with no need to move from one’s desk, so the work that most public servants do on a daily basis can easily be done by the healthy elderly.
Most of us have been subjected to the crude and disrespectful service offered when doing business at government offices. We know of the long wait as the attending clerk gossips on the phone. We have all experienced having to leave the government office unattended because a specific clerk with responsibility for our matter ‘gone out,’ or is on sick leave. We have all, in anger and frustration, turned away knowing full well that ‘gone out’ and ‘on sick leave’ are merely means used by staff to get away from repetitive work and an uninspiring office environment.
For a young clerk, work in the public service is like a jail sentence. In my letter which was published on 20th Sept, 2016, I pointed to studies done over the last ten years on the behaviour of Generation X, Y and Millennials. This was done in my effort to demonstrate the government’s lack of understanding of members of these generations and how this impacted the dispute over the 10% increase in salaries. I now return to that line of argument to support my contention on the staffing of government offices.
Writers like Kenneth Peak (2007), John Ivancevich and Robert Konopaske (2013), and Argenti (2013) have pointed to the tendency of generations X, Y and Millennials to be restless and easily bored. Tempermentally, young people are not suited for repetitive work. Young people want to be challenged every day, they want to learn, they want to be able to take risks, none of these are offered by work in the public service. This is why you will be pressed to find one young person who wants to make working in the public service a profession. For them work in the public service is temporary. The public service offers them a salary as they await the opportunity to go abroad or find something challenging to do.
There are advantages in having the elderly make up the bulk of the civil service. An obvious one is that the level of service offered to the public will improve. Older citizens are known to be less restless, more inclined to treat others with respect. They are patient and therefore more temperamentally suited to undertake routine/repetitive work. With little training they could easily master the limited use the computer is put to when doing the routine work undertaken my most civil servants.
Claudius Prince
Editor’s note; Mr. Prince’s letter is lengthy and will be continued in tomorrow’s edition

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