Ali­cia Llanos

Sec­re­tary of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Psy­chi­atric As­so­ci­a­tion Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh is call­ing on law­mak­ers to ad­dress the is­sue of age dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Deyals­ingh was speak­ing on Tues­day night at a T&T Psy­chi­atric As­so­ci­a­tion meet­ing on the treat­ment op­tions for Alzheimer's Dis­ease at Kam Wah Restau­rant, Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain. He said there was a dire need for Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment Amery Browne to cre­ate an­ti-age dis­crim­i­na­tion leg­is­la­tion es­pe­cial­ly in the work force–where em­ploy­ees who are 65 and over were ex­pect­ed vol­un­tar­i­ly re­tire. He drew the ex­am­ple of the British Em­ploy­ment Equal­i­ty (Age) Reg­u­la­tions 2006 sec­ondary leg­is­la­tion that came in­to force on Oc­to­ber 1, 2006. The reg­u­la­tions fol­lowed the sim­i­lar struc­ture to oth­er an­ti-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry leg­is­la­tion. Sig­nif­i­cant is­sues ad­dressed in the leg­is­la­tion in­clud­ed the pro­vi­sion of na­tion­al de­fault re­tire­ment age set at 65 to be re­tained to for at least five years and the right of em­ploy­ees to re­quest work and work be­yond the re­tire­ment age.

Deyals­ingh said the main cause of the el­der­ly de­vel­op­ing de­men­tia was the lack of cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion–which was of­ten achieved through so­cial in­ter­ac­tion and men­tal chal­lenges found with­in the work­place. He said he un­der­stood the prob­lems that may arise out of an em­ploy­ee de­clin­ing re­tire­ment, for ex­am­ple, the in­abil­i­ty for a ju­nior em­ploy­ees to be pro­mot­ed to the high­er lev­el due to the lack of va­can­cy. Deyals­ingh said a so­lu­tion to such a prob­lem would be the "lat­er­al move­ment" of the se­nior em­ploy­ee, which would al­low him to keep his job and al­low for the up­ward move­ment of ju­nior em­ploy­ees. He said age dis­crim­i­na­tion was of­ten over looked for more out­ward­ly ob­vi­ous forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion such as gen­der and racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, al­though it car­ried the same neg­a­tive per­son­al, so­cial and eco­nom­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions. Deyals­ingh said with 12 per cent of the T&T pop­u­la­tion be­ing over the age of 60, it was vi­tal for law­mak­ers to en­sure that the se­nior pop­u­la­tion would not be made to feel un­pro­duc­tive or no longer use­ful mem­bers of the so­ci­ety.

He added these feel­ings could lat­er con­tribute to de­vel­op­ment of psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems such as de­pres­sion and an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour­al pat­terns. An em­ploy­ee at the Min­istry of So­cial Af­fairs' Age Di­vi­sion said cur­rent­ly there was no leg­is­la­tion to pre­vent age dis­crim­i­na­tion. The em­ploy­ee said, how­ev­er, the min­istry was work­ing to en­sure pro­grammes were made avail­able to all se­nior cit­i­zens to al­low them a high­er qual­i­ty of life.