Time to treat our elderly with dignity

Jun 17, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – They raised us. They worked for us. They fed us. And in the end, too many of them are abandoned.

The sight is becoming far too common. Elderly persons left at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation. Dropped off with no one coming back. Left to the mercy of nurses and social workers.

That is no way to treat people who built this country with their bare hands. So, the news that the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security may be building an elderly care home at Enmore should be welcomed. The advertisement spoke of “execution services.” What that really means is unclear. But if it means building a proper facility for our elderly, then let us say: it is long overdue.

Guyana has a growing population of elderly people. Many are still living with their families. But more and more are being left on their own. Some are being abandoned. And the truth is, we do not have enough quality facilities to house them. There are a few privately run homes. Some are doing their best with limited resources. But many of these homes are in dire need of upgrading.

Walk into some of them and you will see the problems right away.

Too many rooms are cramped. Some residents seem to have moved in with every item they ever owned. The rooms become cluttered, uncomfortable, and unsafe. In other homes, the partitions between rooms do not reach the ceilings. This makes privacy impossible. The residents can hear everything from the next room. Conversations, coughing, radios playing, even snores at night.

And then there is the smell. That awful smell of neglect. It clings to the walls and the furniture. It says something is wrong. Yes, these private homes are filling a gap. They are providing a needed service. But that does not mean they cannot do better. They must do better.

We must raise the standard.

The government has a role to play. Building new facilities like the one at Enmore is one part. But the other part is helping existing homes to modernise. Offer them incentives. Provide guidelines for proper care. Offer grants or subsidies for upgrading. Maybe even help with staff training. The aim should be to lift the level of all elderly homes across the country. Let us also talk about The Palms on Brickdam. For years, this has been our main state-run home for the elderly. But it is stuck in an outdated model. People are still being housed in open wards, like patients in a hospital.

That is not good enough. Not anymore.

Every elderly person deserves their own space. Their own room. Their own door that they can close.  Some years ago, a company introduced containerized housing for the mining sector. Each container was about 20 feet long and 8 feet wide. But inside it was a complete living space — bedroom, toilet and bath, a small kitchen, and even a sitting area.

Why can’t we do that for the elderly?

Imagine a compound made up of these container homes. Each one housing one or two residents. Each with their own space. Each able to live with dignity. This is not an impossible dream. It is a practical solution. And it would mean a world of difference for those who are now living in dorm-style wards with no privacy, no independence, and no peace. Let us not forget who these people are. They are our mothers, our fathers, our teachers, our cane cutters, our civil servants. They are the ones who stood in line to vote, who went to work before sunrise, who built the homes we live in today.

They deserve better.

Too often, we treat the elderly as if they are in the way. As if they are burdens. But one day, if we live long enough, we will be in their place.

So let us act now.

Let us build homes that are clean, safe, and private. Let us support those already trying to provide care. Let us remove the stench of neglect — both literal and symbolic — from the homes where our elderly live. Let us stop building institutions and start creating communities for our elderly. Let us move away from warehousing people and toward dignified living. It is time to stop seeing this as charity and start seeing it as justice. The Enmore home is a start. But it must not be the only move. It must be the beginning of a full reform of elderly care in Guyana. Because how we treat our elderly says everything about who we are. And right now, we have a lot of work to do.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)  

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• Abandoned elderly, elderly, Georgetown Public Hospital, Peeping Tom

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