Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing for greater care and pro­tec­tion for the na­tion’s el­der­ly, say­ing se­nior cit­i­zens de­serve to spend their lat­er years in dig­ni­ty and peace, not fear.

Speak­ing at a health and le­gal clin­ic host­ed by the Geri­atric So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GSTT) at St Bene­dict’s RC Church in La Ro­maine yes­ter­day to mark World El­der Abuse Aware­ness Day, Beck­les high­light­ed re­cent home in­va­sions in­volv­ing el­der­ly vic­tims.

Be­fore at­tend­ing the event, she said she vis­it­ed a 68-year-old Vista­bel­la res­i­dent who was at­tacked by two ban­dits while sit­ting on his ve­ran­da with his wife last week.

She said, “It is not just about sta­tis­tics, and it is not just about da­ta. These are our moth­ers, these are our fa­thers, these are our grand­par­ents, these are our par­ents, these are our un­cles, these are our aunts. These are peo­ple who built this coun­try with their hands, who raised fam­i­lies on mod­est wages, and, very im­por­tant­ly, these are peo­ple who de­serve to spend their fi­nal years in peace and not in fear.”

How­ev­er, she said el­der­ly peo­ple were not on­ly abused by crim­i­nals but al­so by loved ones.

“The Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has told us that hun­dreds of our se­niors come to them each year for fi­nan­cial ex­ploita­tion, where a trust­ed fam­i­ly mem­ber emp­ties a pen­sion­er’s ac­count; for prop­er­ty abuse, where an el­der is pres­sured to sign over the very house they built, on­ly to be qui­et­ly moved in­to a home while some­one else takes pos­ses­sion; for ne­glect; for psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse; for the slow ero­sion of dig­ni­ty that hap­pens when a fam­i­ly sim­ply stops pay­ing at­ten­tion.

“The Di­vi­sion of Age­ing has doc­u­ment­ed dozens of such cas­es from pri­vate homes and some care fa­cil­i­ties right here in T&T.”

Cit­ing a 2014 re­port from the Di­vi­sion of Age­ing, she said there were nu­mer­ous re­ports of pen­sion­ers be­ing swin­dled out of their month­ly pen­sions.

Not­ing that, as an at­tor­ney, she too had wit­nessed “skul­dug­gery and abuse” of the el­der­ly, Beck­les said the last in­for­ma­tion avail­able to her in­di­cat­ed there were 200,000 peo­ple over the age of 60 in T&T.

De­scrib­ing those who prey on the el­der­ly as “a vi­o­lent preda­to­ry mi­nor­i­ty,” she said their ac­tions must nev­er de­fine “us as a peo­ple.”

While stress­ing the im­por­tance of on­go­ing pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and sen­si­ti­sa­tion, Beck­les said, “To­day is not a day of de­spair; it is a day of re­solve. We ho­n­our the good in us, and we com­mit to root­ing out the bad through bet­ter laws, through bet­ter en­force­ment, through com­mu­ni­ty vig­i­lance, and through a cul­ture that sim­ply will not tol­er­ate the mis­treat­ment of those who came be­fore us.”

Mean­while, GSTT founder Dr La­vanya Thon­dava­da not­ed that many se­nior cit­i­zens ex­pe­ri­ence phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, fi­nan­cial and sex­u­al abuse, or ne­glect, in their homes and in­sti­tu­tions, but suf­fer in si­lence as many cas­es go un­re­port­ed be­cause vic­tims may be afraid or de­pen­dent on their abusers.

She added that gov­ern­ment and sup­port sys­tems are crit­i­cal in pro­tect­ing the rights of se­nior cit­i­zens.

Stress­ing that they de­serve to live free from fear and abuse, she al­so en­cour­aged friends, neigh­bours and loved ones to reg­u­lar­ly vis­it and com­mu­ni­cate with the el­der­ly peo­ple in their lives.