No budget and help for old age
TWILIGHT: Who will take care of you when you are 70?
“They know that ministries in the last two years have been told that the money is not available and, therefore, they must spend less than what is budgeted for,” he wrote in his blog with his usual tinge of sarcasm.
In his budget speech, Najib issued a strong rejoinder, saying that it was just another of Dr Mahathir’s scaremongering tactic to cause public confusion and to paint a bad picture of the economy.
He said bankruptcy was never in Malaysia’s economic dictionary.
Najib, in his speech, also told the world that he had fixed some of the Mahathir-era economic largesse, such as raking up huge subsidies, budget deficits and the lopsided privatisation policy.
He had made fiscal consolidation the hallmark of his administration.
Since he took over in 2009, the country’s fiscal deficit had dropped from 6.7 per cent of the gross domestic product to a targeted 3.1 per cent in 2016, and a balanced budget by 2020.
Foreign fund managers and economists have lauded Malaysia’s fiscal policy.
“We believe the actual 2016 fiscal deficit figure will come in at around the low 3.0 per cent region and we think that is still an acceptable rate to international rating agencies, given the challenging global economic climate,” said Franklin Templeton Investments Malaysian Fixed Income and Sukuk executive director/head Hanifah Hashim.
The government put fiscal deficit at three per cent of GDP next year.
Najib also decisively used the budget not to look back but look firmly towards the future when he concluded his speech with an amazing vision — the 2050 National Transformation or TN50, a Najib legacy in the making.
He threw down the gauntlet to Malaysians on how to chart a new course for the nation through a national discourse.
He said the narrative must be spearheaded by a multiracial group of young Malaysians.
Making no reference at all to Dr Mahathir’s Vision 2020 to make Malaysia a developed nation, the prime minister said the time had come to put the past aside.
“From now on, TN50 is our lucky charm. Let the old legacy pass. The future of Malaysia, we recreate,” he said.
Dr Mahathir had accused his former protégé Najib and his administration of erasing his legacy, such as his pet project Proton.
“The New Economic Policy under (Najib’s late father and second prime minister) Allahyarham Tun Razak was planned to create a successful new generation within 30 years.
“So is TN50, which will span three decades to form a calibre nation state with excellent mindset,” Najib said.
Najib’s TN50 Vision, no doubt, will have to give a lot of attention to rejigging Malaysia’s economic strategies going forward.
The rapid pace of technological change will also put Malaysia at risk if it does not move fast enough.
Najib has put Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, one of the youngest cabinet ministers, in charge of conducting the discourse — a sign of Najib’s growing confidence in younger, not ageing, leaders.
Pic by Aizuddin Saad
THE government constructed the 2017 Budget in a very difficult year, when challenges are chasing across the face of the nation and spirits are struggling to keep pace. But who can you depend on to devise your budget in the twilight years, when you may be too old and feeble to fend for yourself ?
This is the dreadful question confronting a dear friend. In her waking hours and in dreams. For in sleep, too, troubles pursue Anna, as relentless and unpitying as a wolf in pursuit of prey.
Her problems were born many weeks ago when her 76-year-old mother fell and fractured a foot.
Now this dear old lady, who taught me when I was 8 years old, was weak even before the unfortunate event. She could not move unaided, and standing was a chore at best.
But her fall also brought to light other problems in the frail body. To tell them all here is unnecessary. Suffice it to say that her weaknesses were spears that, but for the shield of faith, would have shattered Anna’s heart.
Anna labours in the office from 9am to 6pm. But, like most workers, she invariably returns to the family only about 8pm.
At home, her dad and brother, who is deaf and speech impaired, struggle to care for mum. It is a mountain that must be climbed, and it must be climbed every other hour.
Looking at her tired frame in the wheelchair, my mind flies to the old woman in the beautifully crafted, The Mother. Peering into the future and sensing her mortality, she says: “Shall I outlast this shroud, do you think, daughter-in-law? In the summer time I feel I shall, but when the winter comes I am not sure, because my food does not heat me as once it did.”
If Anna had heard those words from the quivering lips of her mum, the tide of sorrow would have drawn in, and tears would have risen from the deep.
But the tears did flow, even without the words, when love and duty clashed with struggle and pain. In this battle, there was no way forward. The point came when Anna had to consider putting her mother in a home for the elderly.
Search she did for such a place, and many did she find. But the rates “were too high”. Must ‘care’ be wedded to ‘impoverishment’?
What is she to do? How can she help her mother?
Indeed, this is the question facing families all over the world. The number of elderly people are rising, as are the concerns about their conditions.
In Malaysia, it is thought that the number of people over 60 will form 14 per cent of the population in 2030, and 23 per cent in 2050. If they are poor, and their sons and daughters
Pic by DCxt too, how will they cope when illness and weakness come?
Perhaps they have some money in the EPF but, in truth, a full 78 per cent of contributors do not have enough savings for their retirement years. This is what the fund says. The warning has been sounded so often that I wonder if it really alarms anyone any more.
The Economist reports that in Britain “spending by local councils on social care for the elderly fell by nine per cent in real terms between 2010 and 2015”. A charity says that “more than one million people who have difficulty with the basic activities of daily life now get no help at all”.
Reverend K.K. Sinnadurai, who has been running a shelter for underprivileged children and the destitute elderly for 30 years, tells me that the government should create a fund from which the poor could borrow to pay for the medical care and other pressing needs of their parents. Or, it should compel insurers to provide coverage until age 85.
But if state, enterprise and family are unable or unwilling to help, can friends and neighbours step into the gap? Yet, they may be similarly constrained, either by a lack of resources or a wave of fear of their own unmet and unknown future needs.
To grow old, very old, then, is a frightful affair for a good many. For Anna, she is blessed to find a ‘kakak’ who is able to help for a little while. For others, it may be a very lonely journey, and seriously unaffordable.