Wednesday, October 08, 2008 Oledan: Judicious investments By Radzini Oledan
OUR community stands to gain from the package of knowledge, wisdom and experience of older persons. But development landscape weighs heavily on the extreme side of glorifying the youth while either omitting older persons or depicting them in stereotypes.
Statistics shows that Region XI has a total population of 5.12 million and the older persons aging 60 and above accounts to 5.10 percent or 261,528 of the total population. Most of our older persons are in the provinces or in rural areas mainly engaged in agricultural activities while those in the city serves as caregivers to their own families especially among their grandchildren whose parents are working.
The transitions that mark the boundaries of age are being altered as family and community structures change. More individuals are also growing older outside of traditional family networks and are simulating family life through communities or primary groups.
In the region, about 85 percent of the older person ages 60 to 75 years old are still earning a living as head of the family while 13 percent especially those whose ages ranges from 75 years old up are dependent of support from their families or relatives or neighbors in the community. Two percent are considered as abandoned and neglected. About 200 of them are found in the institutions for the Elderly.
Traditional family support has been weakened because of the increasing economic crisis, urbanization and other factors that put on pressure on the family system and its ability to provide care and support for the older person.
Thus, the increase in the number of abandoned and neglected persons as reflected in the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) data. Most of the current generations of older persons are poor and marginalized since many of them did not have much education or savings, economic and social security. Simply put, many are ill prepared for their old age.
Ensuring the means of livelihood and income security for older persons has become a major concern. The economic situation of older persons is affected in many ways by their loosening attachments to the workforce, skills obsolescence, devaluation of savings and pensions, and old age, as well as family and society-wide poverty.
In this context, the situation of older women gives rise to particular concern, as they tend to live longer than men do and with fewer resources and community entitlements. Older women tend to experience greater political, social and economic exclusion than do older men.
Older persons can be provided with multiple and meaningful roles. These may include, for example, participation in micro-enterprises and cooperatives, modern applications of traditional healing; cultural transmission in kindergartens, schools and universities; advisory services; and, in situations of conflict, active roles as mediators and counselors.
Policy interventions that include social as well as economic investments can prevent unnecessary dependencies from arising. Ageing can be change from a drain on resources to build up of humane social, economic and environmental capital when judicious investments are made in advance. This requires investing in the phases of life, fostering enabling environment, and creating flexible but vibrant collaborations in the process, through which the future building of a society for all ages can take hold in the present.
