Se­nior cit­i­zens have been urged to be vig­i­lant dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son as they are of­ten re­gard­ed as easy tar­gets for crim­i­nals.

The warn­ing came as the el­der­ly were treat­ed to a day of fun, care and love in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day.

Co­coyea/Tarou­ba Coun­cil­lor Tere­sa Lynch spoke with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day dur­ing the City Cor­po­ra­tion’s Leg­ends, Leisure and Lunch func­tion at City Hall Au­di­to­ri­um, which catered to 150 se­nior cit­i­zens from var­i­ous homes and com­mu­ni­ties in the south­ern city.

The func­tion was held as part of San Fer­nan­do’s City Month cel­e­bra­tions to com­mem­o­rate 35 years of city sta­tus.

Lynch said the event aimed to recog­nise se­nior cit­i­zens who would have con­tributed to the city’s de­vel­op­ment over the years.

“The idea to­day is to ful­ly pam­per them and treat them with the care and love that they de­serve, they have earned it. We have var­i­ous booths and agen­cies, YTEPP giv­ing them full pedi­cures, man­i­cures, hair­cuts, Sacha (Cos­met­ics) do­ing their fa­cial, Val­ue Op­ti­cal...SWRHA pres­sure test­ing, blood pres­sure, glu­cose test­ing. It’s just a day that the se­nior cit­i­zens feel a sense of pride and know­ing that the City of San Fer­nan­do is here to cater to them.”

The coun­cil­lor not­ed that se­nior cit­i­zens are vul­ner­a­ble and easy tar­gets for crim­i­nals. As such Lynch ad­vised them not to do their Christ­mas shop­ping alone.

“We want to be mind­ful to take care of all vul­ner­a­ble groups, but in par­tic­u­lar for the se­nior cit­i­zens. We want to en­cour­age them to have peers, their younger ones, their sib­lings or their grand­chil­dren to ac­com­pa­ny them as they go along shop­ping and all of their Christ­mas. “They get so con­sumed in the whole fes­tive sea­son and we want to en­cour­age a bud­dy sys­tem where we can ac­com­pa­ny them as they tra­verse through the City,” she said.

San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning said se­nior cit­i­zens have made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in var­i­ous spheres of life, and they still have a lot to of­fer.

Man­ning said he has been work­ing with San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Paris on pro­grammes which would see se­nior cit­i­zens be­ing teamed up with young peo­ple who need guid­ance.

“A lot of young peo­ple are cry­ing out every day. Every day they are cry­ing out for role mod­els, cry­ing out for some­one to be there, cry­ing out for some­body to care and there is a lot that you all can do,” he said.

Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said the busi­ness group con­tin­ues to cham­pi­on the call for in­creas­ing the re­tire­ment age be­cause it recog­nis­es that old­er peo­ple still have a lot to con­tribute.

“And we are in a po­si­tion now to ben­e­fit from their wealth of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence, rather than have them dis­ap­pear in­to the wilder­ness and not be­ing able to con­tribute,” Singh said.

Mem­bers of the St Paul’s An­gli­can Church in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Heart of Dor­cas TT were al­so at the event out­fit­ting se­nior cit­i­zens with clothes.