Last Fri­day, sev­er­al pen­sion­ers were robbed out­side First Cit­i­zens Bank in Cou­va. The trau­ma­tised pen­sion­ers made a re­port to the po­lice who, while sym­pa­thet­ic, could not of­fer much so­lace ex­cept sar­cas­tic hu­mour that the ban­dits would be hav­ing a cur­ry duck lime with the amount of mon­ey they stole from the se­nior cit­i­zens. Such em­pa­thy is tru­ly alarm­ing.

I con­cur it is high­ly un­like­ly that the po­lice can be every­where to pre­vent pet­ty crim­i­nals from rob­bing and pil­lag­ing cit­i­zens but can't the po­lice at least be more vis­i­ble in the com­mu­ni­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly at banks when pen­sions are avail­able to the el­der­ly? Ad­mit­ted­ly it is safer for pen­sion­ers to have a bank card to ac­cess their funds but even the ATM ban­dits prey on the el­der­ly.

So while the pen­sion­ers on that day did not suf­fer any phys­i­cal in­juries, the brutes that robbed them have made them afraid of be­ing out in pub­lic where their age and pen­sion make them easy tar­gets for the in­di­vid­u­als with­out a con­science. Per­haps a po­lice pres­ence on those days when the el­der­ly do their bank­ing may pre­vent some of them from be­ing vi­o­lat­ed and robbed of their free­dom and peace of mind.

For those who prey on the el­der­ly, there is a spe­cial place re­served for them when they ex­pire that should in­clude heat and an ap­pro­pri­ate­ly placed pitch­fork.

R Bernadette Shah

Via e-mail