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The elderly

Jun 24, 2024 Editorial

Editorial…

Kaieteur News – The older section of the society is increasingly being placed at a great disadvantage.

These are the people most likely to rely on the medical services and on the various medical benefits toward which they would have subscribed during their active years. Indeed, during the younger years, there was often no consideration on the part of the people who are now the senior citizens, of sickness and ill health. In fact, younger people do not consider such thing because their minds do not focus on those things.

They do not even contemplate retirement and the accompanying benefits. The Scheme does not pay the medical expenses for people over 60 who may not have made a medical claim in the past. People become ill as they grow older; not to pay because the person never made a medical claim prior to 60 akin to encouraging fraud. One may now find that people who are approaching the pensionable age may very well go to a doctor and inveigle him or her to forge some illnesses. The NIS attracts other complaints. People issued with certificates that have faults by the NIS are made to feel that they are responsible for the faults.

Some have been pushed around to the point that they have been reduced to tears. Many depend on this money because their earning capacities have been drastically reduced. Indeed, the Scheme has systems that make collection of whatever pension there is, easier, but once there is a mistake the Scheme places the onus on the pensioner who must sometimes travel miles to correct the problem. But the NIS is not the only entity that deals with pensioners. There are the Government Ministries and Departments. These days the pensioner hears that records cannot be found and that aspects are missing. Sometimes it takes months and even years for some pensioners to receive what they earned during their active years.

This is often not so bad of interest is attached to compensate for inflation but this is never the case. The result is that the pensioner loses money even before he collects it. But his plight is never considered. It is as if having completed his usefulness to the state he is discarded. For more than a decade, some economists have been calling on the government to review the manner in which pensions and gratuity are computed. This should have been done ever since the authorities recognized that the days when pensions were sums on which a worker could have lived and when gratuities were monies that afforded the public servant a chance to own either a house or a car on retirement.

Teachers, now among the lowest on the public servant ladder, are forced to continue seeking employment after they have retired. The gratuity cannot sustain them for a year and the pension cannot feed them for a month. A nation that ignores those who contribute to its development is bound to suffer. Perhaps, this is the reason why the rate of migration is so high.

A Guyanese who works in one of the countries of the metropolis for a number of years gets a substantial sum as social security. The sum can afford this individual to return home and given the exchange rate the person is better off than living and working in Guyana all his life. Older citizens are also provided with special services out of due consideration for the elderly. Transportation is free, they are given preferential treatment, and their slightest concerns are immediately addressed. Guyana now flush with oil money could do a lot more for the elderly.

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