Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox said she is deeply con­cerned about the in­creas­ing num­ber of el­der­ly peo­ple who are hav­ing their pen­sion cheques stolen.

“It is hap­pen­ing. We are now get­ting re­ports al­most every week or every two weeks of some­one re­port­ing their cheques miss­ing,” Cox said dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

When traced, the min­is­ter stat­ed, these cheques are cashed at su­per­mar­kets.

“A su­per­mar­ket re­port­ed that their cheques were not ho­n­oured by the Cen­tral Bank be­cause of the fact that it was false pen­sion cheques,” she said.

“I met with the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion and they have promised to work with us be­cause they need to have more strin­gent mea­sures but part of the prob­lem they tell us is some peo­ple go with false ID cards,” she ex­plained.

“We are not sure where this is em­a­nat­ing from but some­where be­tween TTPost and get­ting to the per­son, the cheques are stolen,” she in­di­cat­ed.

Min­is­ter Cox said even though cheques were fraud­u­lent­ly cashed, the state still has to is­sue new ones to the af­fect­ed pen­sion­ers, there­fore putting fi­nan­cial pres­sure on the state.

She al­so in­di­cat­ed that the Min­istry is aware of fam­i­lies who are tak­ing con­trol of their el­der­ly rel­a­tives’ fi­nances.

“Now that the pen­sion is a good amount of mon­ey, there are per­sons liv­ing off of their fam­i­ly mem­ber’s pen­sion and are not tak­ing care of them prop­er­ly,” Cox lament­ed.

The Min­is­ter an­nounced that she will be meet­ing with the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to­day (Wednes­day) to dis­cuss how the el­der­ly can be pro­tect­ed against these types of crimes.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she re­vealed that leg­is­la­tion to en­hance the rights of the el­der­ly will soon be brought to Par­lia­ment.

Ne­glect and fi­nan­cial abuse are the biggest chal­lenges fac­ing the el­der­ly pop­u­la­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Amid the dai­ly re­port­ing of the coun­try’s fight against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the min­is­ter said abuse is a silent epi­dem­ic now af­fect­ing thou­sands of el­der­ly peo­ple.

For the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1st to May 31st, 2021, 174 re­ports of el­der­ly abuse have been made to the min­istry’s Old­er Per­sons In­for­ma­tion Cen­tre (OPIC) hot­line.

Of this num­ber, 123 were from pri­vate res­i­dences, 28 from homes for the el­der­ly and the re­main­ing 23 were cat­e­gorised as “in­for­ma­tion re­quests”.

The most com­mon form of re­port­ed abuse was ne­glect, num­ber­ing 53 cas­es fol­lowed by fi­nan­cial ex­ploita­tion at 44 cas­es. There were al­so 35 cas­es of phys­i­cal abuse and 20 cas­es of ver­bal/emo­tion­al/psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse.

Mean­while, Geron­tol­o­gist Dr Jen­nifer Rouse not­ed that abuse against this por­tion of our pop­u­la­tion is gross­ly un­der­re­port­ed. Dr Rouse, who is al­so a for­mer Di­rec­tor of the Di­vi­sion of Age­ing, un­der­scored that some cas­es may not be de­lib­er­ate abuse.

“We have to un­der­stand that many of the per­sons in these res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties, it is fam­i­ly mem­bers who are un­trained as care­givers but had to grad­u­ate in­to it be­cause they had no choice,” Dr Rouse ex­plained.

She en­cour­aged peo­ple with el­der­ly rel­a­tives to seek sup­port and train­ing through or­ga­ni­za­tions such as the Alzheimer’s As­so­ci­a­tion on how to prop­er­ly care for their loved ones.

Yes­ter­day coun­tries across the globe com­mem­o­rat­ed World Abuse Aware­ness Day.

In a me­dia re­lease to fos­ter aware­ness of the mis­treat­ment and ex­ploita­tion of old­er per­sons, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices not­ed, “The qual­i­ty of our so­ci­ety will be judged not on­ly by the size of our GDP or our lit­er­a­cy lev­els but per­haps more im­por­tant­ly, by how we treat our el­der­ly and by the place we af­ford them in the na­tion­al space”.

Cit­i­zens are urged to re­port cas­es of el­der­ly abuse to 800-6742 (OPIC).

Pres­i­dent laments treat­ment of el­der­ly dur­ing COVID

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes has ex­pressed con­cern about the many el­der­ly vic­tims of mis­treat­ment, of­ten at the hands of their loved ones, in her mes­sage for World El­der Abuse Aware­ness Day.

“Many cas­es of abuse go un­re­port­ed and un­de­tect­ed, due in part to the cul­ture of shame and se­cre­cy that si­lences vic­tims and harm­ful stereo­types which paint old­er per­sons as more ex­pend­able than oth­er groups,” she said.

Her state­ment notes that el­der abuse has many forms, but said that in the age of COVID-19, a par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling man­i­fes­ta­tion is the fail­ure to plan in­clu­sive­ly for the el­der­ly.

“In the piv­ot to on­line ser­vices and oth­er new ways of do­ing busi­ness, many se­nior cit­i­zens who are not equipped with tech­no­log­i­cal know-how or de­vices have been left be­hind or ex­posed to fi­nan­cial ex­ploita­tion by their rel­a­tives, friends or even strangers at the ATM. To re­duce this risk, banks and oth­er fi­nan­cial and pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions must re­dou­ble their ef­forts to make their sys­tems and ser­vices more ac­ces­si­ble and ac­com­mo­dat­ing to old­er adults,” she said.

She said the re­cent, ap­palling dis­play of dis­re­gard for se­nior cit­i­zens “which left them stand­ing — and when they could no longer stand, sit­ting— on the ground un­shield­ed from the el­e­ments lin­ing the na­tion’s roads is a less than sub­tle form of el­der abuse”.

“Con­di­tions that would have been trau­mat­ic for the young were vis­it­ed up­on our se­nior cit­i­zens; I could not help but think how my own 92-year-old moth­er would have fared in those cir­cum­stances. I take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank the thought­ful and com­pas­sion­ate cit­i­zens who pro­vid­ed chairs for them to rest their weary bones as they wait­ed—some in vain—for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be vac­ci­nat­ed,” she said.