Dropping TT’s retirement age to 60 will cause financial difficulties for persons who will have to live on a fixed income at a younger age, and make the country “bankrupt” with the State having to support an increased population of pensioners.
These views were expressed by senators yesterday during debate on the on a Bill entitled “An Act to amend the Senior Citizens’ Grant Act, Chap. 32:02 and to validate certain actions of the Board.”
Giving his maiden contribution to the debate Government Senator Dr Patrick Watson yesterday said he was not sure people wanted to retire at 60 years. Watson said, “If only because they can’t afford it, because then you go to a fixed income.”
He said at 60 many people were relatively strong, and 60-year-olds should not be herded into retirement.
Watson said the elderly population was supported by the younger working population. “When the young people are working they are maintaining us, and themselves because that is what senior citizens grants are about.”
Watson suggested that as citizens lived to ages 85 and 90 the value of today’s $3,000 pension increase will be eroded over time and there will be “serious difficulties” in the future.
He said, “Notwithstanding the reasonably good increase, in the next five years this will be nothing at all. It will come to nothing.”
Watson said teachers who retired years ago were living on less than $4,000 because their pensions were based on a proportion of their final income. He challenged his colleagues in the Senate to try and live on less than $3,000.
While this was better than nothing, he said “it is not a good life,” and many were just surviving. Watson said the country was facing a serious problem of an aging population and fixed incomes.
He said grants and entitlements were just “touching the tip of the iceberg” and the government had to think “more generally about providing places of abode, and of comfort for our senior citizens.”
He said money had to be found for this idea, but Government had to think about it. He said such facilities should be staffed by “professional people.” Providing a case for this he said, “younger-older people” such as himself did not have the skills or temperament to deal with an elderly parent especially if they developed diseases.
Watson said there were instances where elderly people were left unsupervised and were injured or died. “They have a tendency to break the hip easily. A simple fall, they cannot move when that happens. They die in a house and everybody thinks ‘Mummy is okay’ and mummy is suffering, if not dead.”
He said Government should cater not only for the basic economic well-being of the elderly, but for an environment conducive to their well-being and peace of mind to their relatives.
Watson said he was concerned about the privately operated homes for the elderly that were “springing up all over the place” without a level of government supervision.
Independent Senator Basharat Ali said even if Government thought of lowering the pensionable age and providing pensions for all, the country would probably go bankrupt.
“Sixty years and everybody receiving the $3,000 grant, or pension, or whatever you call it would probably put us into a stage of bankruptcy.”
Ali said instead of pension for all he would prefer to see water for all as an objective.
He said it was “unproductive” to the debate to dwell on the retirement age since it was a question of whether it was campaign rhetoric, or a firm proposal.
“It is time has come for us to sit down and get down to the business of looking after our economy.” Ali supported the Bill “in principle”.
Earlier, Opposition Senator Fitzgerald Hinds criticised Minister of the People and Social Development Glenn Ramadharsingh for returning with the same arguments that he gave in the House of Representatives.
He reminded that during the election campaign the UNC had promised to drop retirement age to 60 and raise pensions to $3,000. Hinds said 134,000 persons between the ages of 60 and 64 were lured to the People’s Partnership on the basis of promises were very disappointed.
