Cher­ish the el­der­ly. This was the ad­vice from Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Win­ston Dook­er­an in his Eid-ul-Fitr greet­ing yes­ter­day.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, in his ca­pac­i­ty as po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple Dook­er­an, said: "On this aus­pi­cious oc­ca­sion of Eid-ul-Fitr, I am ex­treme­ly ho­n­oured to ex­tend Eid Mubarak greet­ings to the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, as well as to all oth­er cit­i­zens of our beloved na­tion."

Quot­ing the Holy Qur'an, he said: "Your Lord has com­mand­ed that you wor­ship none but Him and be kind to par­ents. "If ei­ther or both of them reach old age with you, do not re­buke them, but speak to them in terms of ho­n­our and kind­ness," Dook­er­an urged.

He said the rel­e­vance of the quo­ta­tion come to the fore, as the na­tion was faced with an ever-in­creas­ing age­ing pop­u­la­tion, with at­ten­dant med­ical, so­cial and fi­nan­cial chal­lenges to se­nior cit­i­zens. He said that was es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant when "cher­ished val­ues are un­der siege from the law­less fringe." He said that would have a demon­stra­tion ef­fect on T&T's mul­ti-cul­tur­al na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and would make all cit­i­zens tru­ly de­serv­ing of God's bless­ings.