On budgets and growing old

-Western aid equals poverty?

It is my habit to leave weightier issues like National Budget Analyses to those much better qualified. However, as a citizen on the cusp of being plunged into the heart of the category of the Guyanese elderly, I, never-the-less, was on the watch for a hoped-for provision of this year’s Estimates and Expenditure as presented by the still very young Finance Minister.

You see, I do read Sunday Columnist Dr Ian McDonald on “Growing Old”; before and after my offer to contribute to the work of the local National Commission on the Elderly was met with studied indifference, I read up a lot on the issue of ageing; then I zoned in months ago on “Growing old in Guyana” in this column. So today I again abandon my intention to be more light-hearted and escapist to offer comments instead on the reality of “old age”, the plight of the elderly in Guyana and on what government and society do. Or do not do for its senior citizens.

 

Who are the “elderly”? Reasons, status…..

Even as my regular readers easily detect that I tend to be more anecdotal than scientific and scholarly analytic, I caution that even defining who constitute the “elderly”, the “senior citizen” or the “old”, is not as simple as it might appear at first blush.

This is because there are differences amongst legal concepts and precedents and various cultures. An old citizen in Cuba or California or Guyana might not be considered “senior” in China or in some similar culture where people live to over eighty (80) years routinely. Again, some countries have ages when compulsory retirement from official employment is effected. This issue can be legal, formal, traditional, cultural.

Being “elderly” is usually defined as being significantly past middle age; way over the fifties say. It is custom and fun to say “life begins at forty.” But I know that if pre – and post – forty lifestyles don’t prepare you for the sixties and seventies, those vulnerable periods ramp up “old age” diseases, disabilities and illnesses. Swiftly, both the vibrant impatient youth and thankless governments and other employers deem you old!

In Guyana we seem great (unwisely) at officially declaring otherwise fit, mentally alert and experienced workers and citizens ready for retirement. Sometimes re-employable retirement! New unnecessary contracts! Retirement and old are variously put at 55, 60, 65 by employers, government, army, NIS. Generally though I feel that our more abandoned “professional” senior citizens are a precious human resource recklessly and contemptuously abandoned – to Guyana’s loss.

To conclude my context I repeat what studies and consideration of growing old confront in “developed” cultures. When life expectancy improves dramatically to the eighties, even nineties, societies realize that their medical care, education standards, social safety nets and laws are above par. High-class accommodation for the elderly, therefore, has to be provided. Reasonable, sensible retirement ages must ensure that the younger, qualified worker will not be delayed or denied opportunity. And a government and nation must plan for a greyer, older, silver, golden society. How are we doing here?

 

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Growing old in Guyana

As usual, I contend that national constitutions contain aspirational, idealistic objectives to be relentlessly pursued.  Towards implementation.  In our own Guyana Constitution, very nobly, Articles 24, 149 (B), and 213 are among those with provisions that may address concerns of the elderly.  Oh but the reality!   The Commission for Guyana’s  elderly is headed by an elderly but eminent Judge.  It is bound to attend to the Constitutional rights and statutory arrangements in place but I urge that body to emphasise advocacy for transportation, medical care, pensions, hospices, retirement facilities, even employment for various categories of our Seniors.  In other words, get real!

I don’t criticise or oppose merely because I’m no fan of this government.  I tend to be fair.  Since 1993 there has been a significant slew of governmental interventions improving the lot of our old who really suffered before October 1992.  From the instant removal of the qualification/means “test” for national old-age pension/assistance, to periodic increases, much was done.  But far from enough.

When one sees millions wasted on poorly-managed projects; when you see scores of old folks on sidewalks; when you know that we are not one million souls here, you know that the working-class elderly deserve better.

I thank the Minister for the subsidies for Senior Citizens’ Water and  Electricity Bills, but  just how did he come up with just $625.00 more on over-65’s pensions?  Minister, you can’t fool 43,000 old folks with a “big” number – $212.5M – as more collective “disposable income”.  It’s just $625.00 in Bourda/New Amsterdam Market!  Consider your mom, your dad, your grandparents.  Oh, they’re okay?

 

 

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Assistance breeding poverty

I suppose that to those Third World governments, still imbued with a collective patriotic conscience; to under-developed countries’ economic/foreign trade/ “co-operation” specialists; even to the Western Developed Donors themselves, this is now a well-known theme – and an inconvenient truth.

I hereby recommend the analysis by a Michael Parenti which outlines vividly how foreign aid from Western nations, especially, to Third World (impoverished) States results in more poverty for the poor and more wealth for the rich.  Parenti unravels a well-known economic mystery: “How is it that as corporate investments and foreign aid/international loans to poor countries have increased dramatically over the last 50 years, so has their poverty?”

In a fascinating summary Parenti describes how the USA, for example, invests heavily in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, then benefits from those peoples’ natural resources, high returns from cheap labour, absence of taxation, environmental regulations and worker benefits and occupational safety costs.  (Shades of the Russians, Chinese and invisible investors in Guyana?)

Western business cartels and big-name multi-nationals, subsidized by their countries’ unwitting  taxpayers, push out the poor countries’ indigenous businesses, then dump Western surpluses on the markets of the poor.  Aid given to poor countries comes with the attached strings of spending on the donor countries’ consultants and exports.  Consumption patterns enrich the donors.  U.S aid, for example, works with its transnationals in terms of construction, shipping, financing etc. etc.

Arguing that it is easily verifiable “that (American) loans, investments and most forms of aid are designed not  to fight poverty but to augment the wealth of the international investors”, the analysis also discusses the roles of the IBRD/ World Bank and the IMF as well as greedy, corrupt Third World politicians.  Read Michael Parenti – then Discuss.

 

Welcome…

*1)  A  stimulating, even much-needed debate on Slavery and Reparations is building up in our print media.

Two fine Guyanese minds.  But try to de-personalise it gentlemen.

Til next week!

(Comments? allanafenty@yahoo.com)