To­day, I cel­e­brate my birth­day. And for the first time, as I re­flect on the past few years, I find my­self do­ing the maths. Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from 2022, pub­lished by the Glob­al Econ­o­my, the av­er­age life ex­pectan­cy for a woman in T&T is 78.15 years. In tra­di­tion­al de­mo­graph­ic terms, this means that I have more years be­hind me than ahead of me. It is a sober­ing re­al­i­sa­tion. 

One of the strangest things about grow­ing old­er is the dis­con­nect be­tween the mind and the body. In my mind, I am still in my twen­ties, con­vinced that I can run a marathon. My body, how­ev­er, has a very dif­fer­ent opin­ion. It re­minds me that I am ready to col­lapse af­ter one kilo­me­tre, some­times less. 

Age­ing is a so­cial ex­pe­ri­ence, though most of us view it as a per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence. How we grow old­er is shaped by our health, as well as how so­ci­ety re­sponds to the el­der­ly.

In T&T, more than 13 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is age 60 and over. Thus, rough­ly 177,000 peo­ple are se­nior cit­i­zens, and this num­ber is in­creas­ing every year as our pop­u­la­tion ages.

The Unit­ed Na­tions de­fines a coun­try as “age­ing” when ten per cent or more of its pop­u­la­tion is over age 60. This means that T&T is an age­ing coun­try. 

Ac­cord­ing to the UN World Pop­u­la­tion Prospects (2008), “the per­cent­age of peo­ple in T&T aged 60 years and over is pro­ject­ed to be 17.7 per cent in 2025 and ex­pect­ed to grow to 30.1 per cent in 2050.” 

Straight talk: our el­der­ly pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to play a mas­sive and in­dis­pens­able role in so­ci­ety. Their knowl­edge, skills, lead­er­ship and men­tor­ship make them ir­re­place­able. Yet we con­tin­ue to mar­gin­alise them, es­pe­cial­ly those from low­er-in­come groups, the “av­er­age cit­i­zen.” Many live alone as the chil­dren they grew up be­came too busy with their own lives.

Fam­i­ly struc­tures have changed. In some cas­es, chil­dren have mi­grat­ed and par­ents and grand­par­ents are left to fend for them­selves. We see them strug­gling in the su­per­mar­kets, wait­ing in long lines in the banks, sit­ting for hours on un­com­fort­able seats in the hos­pi­tal clin­ics. Many spend days with no mean­ing­ful in­ter­ac­tions, iso­lat­ed and lone­ly.  

Ageism makes their chal­lenges even hard­er to nav­i­gate, as old­er peo­ple are reg­u­lar­ly dis­missed, talked down to and treat­ed as a bur­den. In this fast-paced world, many of us do not have the pa­tience to move at their slow­er pace. Our work­places are struc­tured to push peo­ple out based on age, rather than abil­i­ty. 

This at­ti­tude is ev­i­dent even at the high­est lev­el of pub­lic life, where Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been sub­ject­ed to age-based re­marks that fo­cus on how she walks or moves. When at­tempts are made to di­min­ish even a Prime Min­is­ter by ageist com­men­tary, it should come as no sur­prise that or­di­nary el­der­ly cit­i­zens are of­ten over­looked, not treat­ed with re­spect and con­sid­er­a­tion and have few­er op­por­tu­ni­ties to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in so­ci­ety be­cause of their age.  

The is­sue of safe­ty, or lack of safe­ty, is even more dis­turb­ing. Across the coun­try, there are re­peat­ed re­ports of el­der­ly per­sons be­ing tar­get­ed in their own homes. 

Of­fi­cials have warned that el­der­ly peo­ple have been tar­get­ed for home in­va­sions and rob­beries. Ear­li­er this year, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Wayne Mys­tar urged fam­i­ly mem­bers to pay at­ten­tion to the el­der­ly and to “vis­it them reg­u­lar­ly, be­cause they are one of the tar­get groups that those crim­i­nals are ac­tu­al­ly go­ing af­ter.” 

Sad­ly, grow­ing old now means be­com­ing a tar­get. 

The is­sue of el­der abuse is al­so very dis­tress­ing. There are too many cas­es where el­ders are abused, ne­glect­ed, ex­ploit­ed and mis­treat­ed phys­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly.

In 2023, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices record­ed 216 re­ports of el­der abuse. It is wor­ry­ing that 182 cas­es oc­curred in pri­vate res­i­dences and 34 in homes for the el­der­ly. Giv­en that we don’t have any way to mon­i­tor pri­vate res­i­dences and old age homes, it seems like­ly that in­ci­dents of abuse will con­tin­ue to oc­cur.

And these are the cas­es which are ac­tu­al­ly re­port­ed, it is pos­si­ble that there are many oth­er un­re­port­ed cas­es, es­pe­cial­ly per­sons who are ashamed, fear­ful or sim­ply iso­lat­ed.  

So, what can we do dif­fer­ent­ly? What we need to do now is change how we think, act and plan. In de­vel­oped coun­tries, there are pro­grammes which pro­vide aides and bud­dies to el­der­ly cit­i­zens, so they don’t feel iso­lat­ed and they have op­por­tu­ni­ties to so­cialise. 

Here in T&T, maybe we just need to build a deep sense of com­mu­ni­ty, where we check in on each oth­er and sup­port those who most need it. T&T al­ready pro­vides free pub­lic trans­port, ac­cess to some med­ica­tions through CDAP and an old-age pen­sion; now, we need to build on this so that the sup­port sys­tem is ex­pand­ed and even stronger.  

As I be­gin an­oth­er year of life, I am acute­ly aware that age­ing is a priv­i­lege. The years teach you what tru­ly mat­ters, and that les­son alone is worth cel­e­brat­ing.