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{
    "id": 418346,
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    "content": "of these schemes. The delay and the amount of money involved is so small that it is not able to take care of them. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I need not say that the elderly people do not have significant access to medical care. They do not get proper nutrition and this is made difficult in that most of this elderly population does not have teeth. When they have something to eat, they have issues with regard to chewing food. Deprivation of property is one of those challenges that the elderly people are facing. The law as it is at the moment is not able to protect the elderly even from their own relatives. We are aware that there are many legal cases that are pending in courts where individuals who are much younger are depriving the elderly people of their resources because of lack of stringent laws that would probably protect the elderly people. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, whenever there is retrenchment, the greatest victims of this exercise are the elderly in society and we think this is a discriminative process as a result of ageing. This is something that we must be able to take care of. At the moment, though couples live longer, we are aware of the factors that are obvious to us, for example, widowhood. The elderly people who are living alone are increasing in number and the women are more in this category basically because of the reasons we know; that men tend to marry younger girls and probably exit this universe earlier than women. This is a very significant proportion of our population which in this country is up to 16 per cent. These are women who are widowed at the age of above 70 years and probably need special care. I want to make a plea here that as a society, we know that the aged people have done their bit; they have worked very hard and brought the society where it is. We really owe no other gratitude to these old people than if we were to develop a specific deliberate policy that can make their sunset years more comfortable than it is at the moment. It is for this reason that I urge this Senate to debate this Motion and find out ways in which we can actually behave like human beings unlike animals who do not care at all about their old. We should be human and this is one of the ways in which we can show gratitude to the old population who are our parents. Let us not forget that we might not only be talking about today’s old people, we are also in line and are actually talking about ourselves. We should set up institutions so that we can be well taken care of. In fact, the changed circumstances affect us more than anybody else. As we sit here, I know there are Senators here who have probably got their children in three or four continents; a son in Australia, a daughter in The Netherlands and another one in Los Angeles. These are the people we expect to make our lives comfortable. The aged should sleep in clean sheets every day and get good nutrition every day. Therefore, we would like to develop a policy anchored in law and proper regulations so that we are able to take care of these individuals. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I want to urge the Senators who are going to debate this Motion to look at it very closely and be able to develop a policy in which we can take care of other old people and ourselves. I beg to move and ask Sen. (Prof.) Lonyangapuo to second. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}