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Please, please, bail out hapless retirees
2008-03-30 09:30:23
By Editor
We have and will continue to be part of the broad chorus on the plight of retirees, as long as the chorus is brushed aside as empty chatter, rather than a genuine call to positive, decisive action.
The recurrent major aspects of the issue are, first, that many of today’s elderly, frail, frustrated retirees were yesterday’s active, dedicated patriotic nation builders.
Secondly, rather than enjoy themselves during the sunset of their lives, as a justified reward for their praiseworthy past, plus a gesture of appreciation from the younger generation, they are a dejected and even mocked lot.
Hardest hit are former employees of the original East African Community (EAC) that collapsed in 1977.
Theirs has been a case of an injured person whose pain is deepened by pepper being rubbed onto the wound.
They waited for nearly 30 years before formalities for releasing retirement benefits were completed.
They were lucky, because many of their colleagues had died; and yet payment has been elusive due to various, mainly bureaucratic technicalities.
Sorting out the technicalities has been very slow, prompting the old, sickly persons haunted by approaching death to travel and camp in the open in Dar es Salaam for several months, believing that proximity to the centre would hasten matters.
Some have died, and some have taken to demeaning survival options like hawking empty plastic bottles as well as begging for alms.
No good has been produced by few and far between sentiments of sympathy and pledges for action.
It is a crying shame that should jolt the relevant authorities, members of parliament and the rest of society into ending the misery of those senior citizens.
Else, terrible fear is bound to be instilled onto members of the young work-force, of the thankless farewell that awaits them when they become retirees.
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