THE government constructed the 2017 Budget in a very difficult year, when challenges are chasing across the face of the nation and spirits are struggling to keep pace.
But who can you depend on to devise your budget in the twilight years, when you may be too old and feeble to fend for yourself?
This is the dreadful question confronting a dear friend. In her waking hours and in dreams. For in sleep, too, troubles pursue Anna, as relentless and unpitying as a wolf in pursuit of prey.
Her problems were born many weeks ago when her 76-year-old mother fell and fractured a foot.
Now this dear old lady, who taught me when I was 8 years old, was weak even before the unfortunate event. She could not move unaided, and standing was a chore at best.
But her fall also brought to light other problems in the frail body. To tell them all here is unnecessary. Suffice it to say that her weaknesses were spears that, but for the shield of faith, would have shattered Anna’s heart.
Anna labours in the office from 9am to 6pm. But, like most workers, she invariably returns to the family only about 8pm.
At home, her dad and brother, who is deaf and speech impaired, struggle to care for mum. It is a mountain that must be climbed, and it must be climbed every other hour.
Looking at her tired frame in the wheelchair, my mind flies to the old woman in the beautifully crafted, The Mother. Peering into the future and sensing her mortality, she says: “Shall I outlast this shroud, do you think, daughter-in-law? In the summer time I feel I shall, but when the winter comes I am not sure, because my food does not heat me as once it did.”
If Anna had heard those words from the quivering lips of her mum, the tide of sorrow would have drawn in, and tears would have risen from the deep.
But the tears did flow, even without the words, when love and duty clashed with struggle and pain. In this battle, there was no way forward. The point came when Anna had to consider putting her mother in a home for the elderly.
Search she did for such a place, and many did she find. But the rates “were too high”. Must ‘care’ be wedded to ‘impoverishment’?
What is she to do? How can she help her mother?
Indeed, this is the question facing families all over the world. The number of elderly people are rising, as are the concerns about their conditions.
In Malaysia, it is thought that the number of people over 60 will form 14 per cent of the population in 2030, and 23 per cent in 2050. If they are poor, and their sons and daughters too, how will they cope when illness and weakness come?
Perhaps they have some money in the EPF but, in truth, a full 78 per cent of contributors do not have enough savings for their retirement years. This is what the fund says. The warning has been sounded so often that I wonder if it really alarms anyone any more.
The Economist reports that in Britain “spending by local councils on social care for the elderly fell by nine per cent in real terms between 2010 and 2015”. A charity says that “more than one million people who have difficulty with the basic activities of daily life now get no help at all”.
Reverend K.K. Sinnadurai, who has been running a shelter for underprivileged children and the destitute elderly for 30 years, tells me that the government should create a fund from which the poor could borrow to pay for the medical care and other pressing needs of their parents. Or, it should compel insurers to provide coverage until age 85.
But if state, enterprise and family are unable or unwilling to help, can friends and neighbours step into the gap? Yet, they may be similarly constrained, either by a lack of resources or a wave of fear of their own unmet and unknown future needs.
To grow old, very old, then, is a frightful affair for a good many. For Anna, she is blessed to find a ‘kakak’ who is able to help for a little while. For others, it may be a very lonely journey, and seriously unaffordable.
David Christy has been with NST for 20 years, and possesses a keen interest in history.