Ageing in the age of ageism

SOME YEARS ago, I went to a pharmacy. An elderly woman was before me, so I stood a few feet behind her for privacy. A cheerful pharmacist came back to her and quoted a price. The woman responded and the pharmacist left and returned, quoting a lower figure.

Again, the woman said something to her and the cheerful smile disappeared. In a soft, sad tone, she said, “No, you can’t take one. They have to be taken together.” The woman hesitated for about 20 seconds, retrieved her prescription, and turned to leave.

As she turned, I recognised her. She was a former stalwart of the teaching profession. And she could not afford to fill her prescription. This remained with me.

My snooping, over the next few years, has left me very, very concerned. It seems that many of the retired government workers in Jamaica are either flat broke or having a difficult time finding the basics for survival. Were they just careless?

Born in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, these persons would have entered the world of work when a brand-new car could be purchased for £$1,300 and a litre of gas would cost 7 cents. The Jamaican currency was stronger than the US dollar.

Two years after high school, the prudent worker could start thinking of owning a house. One in the Harbour View scheme was going for £1,200. They could be forgiven for thinking retirement would be an easy time and that their government would, should, and could take care of any problem.

But what can the Government do? There is also a major mental-health monster that is about to surface. Denarto Dennis, an economics lecturer at the University of the West Indies, writing for The Sunday Gleaner of October 19, 2014, had this to say of Jamaica’s modern economic performance:

“... Relatively good economic performance continued up to the early 1970s ... . Growth, however, took a snag for most of the years after 1973, a year in which the world economy experienced a major oil price shock that hit the Jamaican economy very hard ... . The strong socialist agenda of the Government brought notable but unsustainable social advances, forcing Jamaica into a tough borrowing