Promote the rights of the aged - HelpAge Ghana

HelpAge Ghana, an advocacy group, has called on government to ensure that the rights of the aged were protected by giving them proper social assistance for them to live decent lives.

“It was high time the State promoted the rights of older people and provided them with social assistance to enable them live and maintain a decent standard of living as stipulated in the Article 37 (2) (b) of the 1992 constitution,” it added.

This was contained in a resolution jointly signed by the advocacy group and its partners and copied to the Ghana News Agency.

The National Pensioners Association-SSNIT, Trade Union Congress-Ghana, RECOA-Customs, Doyens of TUC, University of Ghana Pensioners Association, REPOA-Prisons and ARIO-Immigration were among the partners.

It reminded government that older people had contributed their quota to the development of not only the family but community and the country at large and were still relevant to Ghana’s development and thus, the need to take care of them.

“Government should revise the syllabi of health training institutions for health workers to appreciate and provide the needed healthcare to old people and again diseases and drugs coverage of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) should be made relevant to the health needs,” it added.

The Group said that the National Scale-up Plan on Ageing and Health in Ghana developed in August 2013 with support from the World Health Organisation should be incorporated in the NHIS.

It behoves the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection to make strategic statement as well as take action to give quality services to the older citizens.

The resolution said, aside the non-implementation of the President’s “Freedom pass for Older People,” to ease the cost of burden on using public transport, announced at the annual luncheon for selected senior citizens in July 2017, the national ageing policy approved by Cabinet was also not working.

It is therefore appealing to government to act on its promise to institute the “Freedom pass for the Aged” and also help pass the Aged Bill into an Act so as to make life better for the senior citizens.

“The establishment of the proposed National Council on ageing to address impacting negatively on the quality of life of older people should also be implemented to make their lives better,” it noted.