By Polycarp Onwubiko
I am delighted that my advocacy in the Facebook page and National Light newspaper last year urging Governor Soludo to consider the need for the establishment of aged/old people’s home has been recognized as necessary and the project is in the 2024 Budget proposal.
Many people are suffering in silence and in quandary on catering for their ageing and elderly parents usually residing in the village. In this day and age, one hardly get servants and maids to be taking care of their ageing parents in the village because of government free primary and secondary school education programmes.
Consequently, the ageing and elderly in the village are alone, cooking food for themselves, taking the arduous task of cutting ever growing grasses in the compound and other household chores at the risk of their frail health status even as healthcare delivery is nothing to write home about in the hinterlands.
In the inevitable attempt to carry out the necessities, some of the ageing and elderly parents break down in health and if the neighborhood don’t visit them, they die and got rotten until the corpse start decaying and oozing smell. Some people having seeing these sad happenings decided to take their ageing and elderly parents to where they live in urban and semi urban towns. But the inconveniences are indescribable, hence dying in silence even as some sickness which became so grave led to passing faeces and urine inside the room where they are. This is “hell on earth”, as it were which many people suffered and are going through now
So, Government of Anambra state decision to establish ageing and elderly people’s home is highly appreciated and commendable and should be the pattern in all the states of the Federation. The funding should be accorded top priority in the annual budgets and to supplement the budget, people and organizations should see the need to contribute money and facilities to ensure that the running of the ageing and elderly people’s home is like what it is in the developed countries of the world.
Government should be very strict in the recruitment of people to oversee the Homes because there is the tendency for the workers to develop into wolves and steal commodities and facilities provided by the government and philanthropists. The allure will be there because God-fearing people are scarce commodities in the present day in the country.
Polycarp Onwubiko JP, is public policy analyst.
