Budgets should pay more attention to the elderly and challenged persons

Dear Editor,

One of the hurdles we need to address is our approach to the presentation and adoption of the national budget. The budget should be a proposal on taxation measures and expenditures, recommendations by a sitting government on the necessary programmes to be adopted to maximize growth prospects within a phased development framework for that particular year. In this regard, it should be subject to debate, discussion and modification, to ensure that it appropriately caters to the concerns and welfare of interest groups and the wider population.

Our senior citizens and otherwise challenged persons have been paid scant attention within the budgetary process over the years, with the result that many of them have become trapped in the poverty we have committed to eradicating from our society.

Our senior citizens in particular deserve much more than provided for in our budgets. This is an issue of national concern, since very few families can claim not to have aged persons who require some kind of financial or other support. What would be helpful is some reflection on who these individuals are and the respect that they deserve in the form of adequate provision of financial, health and other necessary support services.

These individuals are our parents who have provided for us as children and ensured that we received the education and/or other training necessary to become successful men and women. Economically, many of them managed through difficult times, and it is through no fault on their part that their pensions have been reduced to pennies by the macroeconomic policy adjustments that have effectively pauperized our country.

Unfortunately, senior citizens and challenged persons have little or no voice or lobbying force in our politics to ensure that their welfare issues are properly represented and addressed. Now is the time to start paying attention to them and moving to adopt financial measures and programmes to ensure that they live the remainder of their lives in the comfort they justly deserve.

To this extent, greater provision needs to be made for increasing pensions to compensate for the loss in the real value of these earnings, along with other appropriate allowances and benefits. An excellent reference for the political will be necessary for this is that which was recently exerted in seeking to provide benefits to Hamilton Green, commensurate with the portfolios he previously held.

Yours faithfully, Craig Sylvester