PAKISTAN: Senior Citizens Benefit Bill Put On Backburner

LAHORE, Pakistan (The Nation), February 4, 2008: The government of Pakistan seems to have put the “Senior Citizens Bill” on the backburner, as the proposed legislation had been pending with the government for last over eight years. The government’s perpetual inaction to enact law providing for some benefits to over eight million elderly people in Pakistan has raised alarm among the senior citizens who had been hit hard by the rising inflation in the last many years. The pending bill contains a framework for welfare of senior citizens including better health facilities, old age benefits and financial assistance. Poor health care for the senior citizens is one of the most important issues as expensive medication, their unavailability; separate counters and even separate wards in hospitals for greater care of senior citizens are some of the matters that need immediate attention. The draft law had been tossed around from one department to another between the parliamentary committees and finally now resting in the prime minister’s office for cabinet approval without any fruitful result for the last more than eighteen months. It is most unfortunate that senior citizens considered to be a great asset and important segment of any nation, has been totally ignored, leaving them at the mercy of rising inflation, unbearable cost of living, expensive medication and hospitalization, beyond reach cost of travel and dwindling incomes. The senior citizens are dismayed at no response and concern on the part of the government, which, despite being a signatory to the UN Conference has persistently ignored and almost shelved the proposed bill wanting enactment since 2006. Time and again efforts have been made to push the bill, but the previous government and now the interim have both ignored the requests for the earliest enactment to provide facilities for senior citizens that constitute now almost over eight million in Pakistan, thus terming it least important. A spokesman of the Senior Citizens Foundation of Pakistan, Lahore Chapter had said that the prime minister of Pakistan should act quickly for an early enactment of “Senior Citizens Bill” to institutionalize arrangements for the welfare of senior citizens to prevent them from exorbitant increase in prices of articles of common use and take effective corrective action through price regulation and financial compensation particularly for fixed income groups, in travel, healthcare and by doing away with withholding taxes on utilities etc. © Copyright 2004 - Nawaiwaqt Group of News Papers