Dear Editor,
The month of the elderly for 2016 will end shortly. Every year the government of Guyana has, by its statements made 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 elderly’s material needs is all that matters.
When I speak of improving the lives of the elderly I am not thinking of human material needs; 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. To date no government in Guyana has ever offered a policy for involving the elderly in national development. It is as though there is a feeling that with age the elderly somehow no longer have other needs. The ridiculousness of this omission can fully be appreciated when one recognizes that in Guyana the bulk of knowledge and skills reside with the elderly.
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 nevertheless surely moves into the technological age, work in the public service becomes 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 fully 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. Several writers have pointed to the tendency of generations X, Y and millennials to be restless and easily bored. Temperamentally, young people are not suited for repetitive work; they want to be challenged every day, they want to learn, they want to be able to take risks, none of which is offered by work in the public service.
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 by most civil servants. Interestingly in the developed world the private sector is comfortable employing elderly workers. A study done in the USA on this issue found that companies that employed older workers experienced the advantages of “lower turnover, greater consciousness of safety, longer work experience, more maturity, and more loyalty to the enterprise.” McDonald’s, for example, actively recruits older workers. A statement from the enterprise reads: “the firm decided to permit older workers to proceed at their own pace, provide them with experts they can consult with, and then get out of their way and let them work. McDonald is very satisfied with the older workers’ productivity, attendance, and attitude.”
If young people are not temperamentally suited for the public service, the question then becomes why are we still bent on having them there? The answer is that the private sector is not as active as desired and creates too few jobs, and that our school system is not organized for preparing our young people to create their own employment. Thus the government faced with a high level of youth unemployment, has chosen to send workers into retirement at an early age. In doing so it creates vacant slots for young people leaving school and needing jobs. So, historically governments in Guyana practise age discrimination and thus mask the true unemployment figures. In the end, we are confronted with this ridiculous situation in which those who are suited for the job are at home, and those who hate the job are doing it. Ultimately both groups are dissatisfied and national development is held hostage.
Years ago the Burnham government was prepared to think and act outside of the box and in doing so gave rise to excitement and enthusiasm among Guyanese youth. During that period the Guyana National Service, employing the raw energy of youth and the know-how of retirees from the civil service, army and police force gave Caricom its most inspiring and boldest attempt at national development. Love or hate Burnham, there is no denying that with his passing we seem to have also lost our courage, our self-belief, our willingness to dream and act on those dreams. Today, Guyana and the entire English-speaking Caribbean struggle to articulate a vision and initiate a programme that effectively marries the strengths of youth and elderly in their national development efforts.
I recently read that President Granger opined that we have to find out why young people commit crime. Today many psychologists posit that the psychological needs of the young are not met by modern society. Risk is daily being eliminated and as a consequence opportunities for excitement and adventure are being squeezed out of our lives. As this happens some young people will see anti-social behaviour (including a resort to crime) as one of the few means left for satisfying their need for challenge and excitement. Perhaps we are already seeing a demonstration of this in the form of an alarming rise in the number of young criminals. Our search for the causes of crime has so far been limited to the traditional areas of poverty, unemployment, parental neglect, differential association, etc. I encourage the president to recognize attention to these areas alone will not suffice. The President has also talked of creating a college to train young people for a future in the public service, but for the reasons articulated above, I fear this will be another expensive and unproductive effort.
Today in Guyana we live day to day, doing each day what we did the day before. Our youths are not challenged and our elderly have essentially been told they have lost their usefulness. Both generations exist in a state of hopelessness. And our politicians seem confused, lost.
Yours faithfully,
Claudius Prince
