Mobilising the grey brigade

I recently found a booklet in my letter box with the title Minn Qalbna.... Ghalik. It publicises the services that governments make available to older people. The tone of the script is at times soppy and often outright patronising. It confirms how far we are from adopting an active aging strategy in the way we look at an ever growing section of our society – the aging generation often endearingly termed as the grey brigade.

Another sad vacuum in our aging strategy is an effective preventive medical screening scheme- John Cassar White

With one of the lowest labour participation rates in the European Union, it is important that more people join the labour force if our economy is to grow at a rate that that will make convergence with EU living standards a reality. Since we joined the EU we have made little progress in this convergence target, despite the fact that the EU average GDP per capita stalled when a number of poor former Eastern bloc countries joined the Union.

The government has rightly introduced incentive schemes to encourage more women to join the workforce. But it seems that progress has stagnated as most women in the age bracket of 45 to 60 do not have the necessary qualifications and skills set to find suitable employment in today’s economy. So what are ways exist that could boost our labour supply?

Unfortunately with our low educational achievement record where more than one out of three young people leave our educational system with no formal qualifications or skills, we may not have enough suitably qualified young people to boost our labour force. Unqualified young people often end up being exploited when they have few options but to accept precarious work conditions. The attempts to remedy this problem through a greater investment in further education are laudable, but they will take a long time to affect our labour supply.

So the time has come to take up the models adopted by countries like Britain that now enable older workers who want to continue working beyond working age to do so by right. Such older workers may be prepared to work under different conditions that those they were used to when they reached the official retirement age, but at least they are not forced on the human scrap heap prematurely. The University of the Third Age may not appeal to those who want to remain active in the labour market to enjoy the social and financial benefits that employment can often provide.

Another sad vacuum in our aging strategy is an effective preventive medical screening scheme. Middle aged people need to be screened more systematically for the early identification and treatment of debilitating diseases that often become chronic in old age. This is not only more cost effective in the long term, but also helps to reduce the debilitating morbidity that often prevails in older age. With our national health system struggling under the sheer weight of an ageing population, we need to move on from simply managing the present crisis to managing future demographic pressures on our health service through an effective active ageing strategy.

The micro measures so glossily explained in the Parliamentary Secretariat for the Elderly and Care in the community booklet are all positive. But they need to be reinforced by a coherent aging policy that goes much deeper on the actions needed to make our older people not just sweet senior citizens, but also an active force in our society to the extent that their health and personal disposition permit. Institutionalising the care of older people by building more residential care facilities is hardly a substitute to mobilising the grey brigade to remain active and independent in their old age.

To promote active aging we need to make important changes in our strategy such as promoting the employment of older people beyond the official retiring age, introducing a more effective health screening programme for middle aged people, and investing in halfway house facilities that offer temporary accommodation for older people that are not well enough to look after themselves for a period of time but not really sick enough to be hospitalised.

This is a long-term project that needs to be devised with the help of the medical profession, labour market experts, sociologists, as well as ordinary citizens who are living the realities of aging in today’s society. Active aging goes beyond the often discussed pension reforms. It is all about acknowledging that our society discriminates blatantly against older people and about having the political will to empower older people.

johncassarwhite@yahoo.com