With Barbados having “an ageing and aged population”, Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs, Kirk Humphrey, is calling for the country’s elderly to be viewed as “a resource” and not to be taken advantage of.
Addressing Monday’s official launch ceremony of BARP’s new Legacy Foundation BARP Members Business Centre, at Hastings, Christ Church, Mr. Humphrey stressed: “We have to find a way for persons to start thinking so about the elderly … because the vast majority of us, in the next 15 or 20 years, would be either approaching there or already there.”
As he congratulated BARP on “the amazing work it has done with the elderly population in Barbados”, the Elder Affairs Minister suggested it may be necessary to find a way to incorporate those of us who are ageing into the conversation and “in a way that does not suggest persons who are ageing are a burden on the society or are weak”.
He reminded the audience that Government was also seeking to change the concept of the elderly, children, and the disabled as being weak, through changes to its policies and legislation. This, said Mr. Humphrey, would give Government the ability to, for instance, change the laws to make it ‘‘easier” to defend ageing persons, as the current legislation is weak, with some being between 80 and 180 years old and not fit for purpose.
Meanwhile, stating that the world was moving in a more digitalised way, he stressed that older persons should be involved in those discussions.
He noted the difficulties experienced during COVID by older people receiving physical cheques and trying to cash them, and of Government putting the money into their bank accounts.
“Why do you want to put it on the banks directly, etc.? You can’t win, right? But it is a conversation that I think mature minds have to be able to engage in. We saw the same thing with the welfare cheques; persons not wanting the cheques to be placed directly onto their accounts. But we have found that the cheques are easy avenues for all kinds of fraud. First of all, people were trying to copy the cheques, but secondly, people were charging high rates to cash the cheques and it was egregious,” said Mr. Humphrey.
Emphasising this was a way to be able to protect older people because daily a lot of people try to take advantage of them, he added: “We cannot afford for that to happen. So, one way to ensure that does not happen is to ensure that we give them the capacity, the competency to be able to use computers, to be able to come here during the day.”
Further praising BARP’s work on the Centre, the Elder Affairs Minister said: “I suspect that it is that level of engagement and care that will transform Barbadian society and that what you have done here might be in a way a microcosm of what is required on a larger scale to be able to propel Barbados forward.