THE NEGLECT OF THE ELDERLY

Paul Andrew Bourne, B.Sc. (Hons); Dip. Edu.

Many developing countries continue to grapple with inadequate economic resources, reprehensible government policies and a robust hegemonic class that exploits the laboured class; with a social welfare system, that does not ameliorate the well-being of the poor. With time, the demagogues are primarily concern with self, associates and the continuation of the status quo, which oftentimes excludes the proletariat. Such societies refrain from coalescing programmes that support the elderly and other disadvantaged groups. Annals in respect to contemporary societies are to maintain the orthodox principles of existence and the structures, instead of formulating a system that addresses the best interest of all classes. In Third World countries, the elderly's survivability is mostly on state programmes and the ?'socialiabilty' of communities but the state's welfare package is such that the message seems to be ?'let us annihilate those beings' (Bourne, 2005); as economic costs are exorbitantly towering and the value of the welfare package is relatively low in comparison to the inability of many aged to be in productive group. Therefore, developing countries produce people who are far removed from being hospitable from the concerns of the poor, as their own existence is paramount within the construct of high cost of living, and the elderly are usually placed on the outskirts of resource allocations.

Rahman (1999) summarized the dilemma of Third World elderly in a carefully crafted monograph that highlighted the socio-political biases of the hegemony. He forwarded the perspective that:
Bangladesh, like most of the developing world, has not paid much attention to its elderly largely because there has been and continue to be a tacit assumption that they will be taken care of by the family (Rahman, 1999, p.227)

The epistemology of Rahman is befitting to the Jamaican social reality and that of many other Caribbean islands. As a social scientist, I am flabbergasted with covert actions of many of our demagogue on matters relating to adequate existence of the poor and the elderly. There exists dialectic in the world as profits replace the value of people, while people contribute to the attainment of profitability.

The elderly expend their human and social resources in the edifice of contemporary societies, and they are offered in return inadequate ?'institutional sources of support' in the form of pensions, insurance and a political system that covertly prefers the economic class. There is a societal consensus that belittles the efforts of the older age cohorts. The superb capacity that exists in this group is oftentimes overlooked, and the young serenely anticipate their departure from this physical existence. When they decide to vocalized objections to particular issues, the trajectories are difficult. Firstly, in the proletariat class, they are ostracized, ridiculed and isolated from the normal course of life by either not listened to (idea less) or informed to ?'shut up'. On the other hand, they are viewed as hurdle to financial resources; if they have property or other material possessions this fuels the young dislike and hate of them. In respect to the bourgeoisie, sometimes they opt to have their aged kin be placed in homes and if they are at the family's residents, they have miniscule input in decision-making concerning their own survivability. Irrespective of the social status of many people, the aged are obstacle to freedom of mobility and for some their contributions are old fashioned and irrelevant.

The society has been distant in offering social graces to the aged. This is seen in instances when the elderly are in public transport being tossed and squashed by younger people. Sometimes no one recognizes that aged exist. People find the aged offensive on the streets. When they seek to cross main road, "they dread the monologue of motorist". When a motorist decides to allow them to cross the streets, they are hurried, jived and ridiculed. The process becomes even more difficult within the construct of behaviour of onlookers and motorists. In order for this to change, political agencies should not legislate measures that will have other members within society offer sympathy or empathy but the socialization process must be fashioned to accept the contributions of the aged in addition to seeing the elderly as valuable statesmen.