We need urgent actions for old age

October 1 is the International Day of Older Persons. In Uganda, the day was on Tuesday commemorated under the theme: ‘Economic Empowerment of Older Persons: The Road to Financial Independence.” Financial independence for the older persons is critical, considering that at this stage, one’s level of productivity is low hence they become highly vulnerable to poverty. Unfortunately, for many Ugandans, old age poverty is mostly the norm than the exception.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (2009/10), 29 per cent of households with older people are poor. An even larger percentage of the older persons remain highly vulnerable to poverty; 74 per cent are insecure non-poor compared with a national average of 67.5 per cent. Also, 4.5 per cent and 3.2 per cent of the Ugandan population are aged between 60 years and 65 years or higher.

But despite government efforts to support older persons through the Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment (SAGE), this has proved quite challenging due to resource constraints. In fact, instead of the UN definition of older persons as those aged 60 years and above, Uganda has opted for 80 years and above as individuals eligible for the elderly grants.

Cognisant of such challenges, we need to re-think interventions targeting old age. Just as we worry about today’s survival, we need to start considering how we want to spend old age. The current schemes such as National Social Security Fund (NSSF) even with the ongoing debates for reforming it seems to be inclined on targeting the formal sector in a country that is largely dominated by informal sector.

What we fail to appreciate is that the people who are currently not covered by any form of contributory social security schemes when they can afford to will instead require government ‘bailout’ at old age.

The Sage was ideally conceived as a stop-gap measure while government devises means to ensure that people contribute to social security schemes so that they are covered for such a time as retirement. In fact, the 2015 National Social Protection Policy, lays out a number of interventions to ensure that every Ugandan is covered by some form of social protection.

However, with desperate interventions, the country is only breeding cohorts that will still require these grants in the form of the unsecured working populations today.

The challenges of today’s older persons should be learning points for the future. Targeting people now when they can ably contribute to social security is key. The concept of insurance even in its basic conceptualisation is still not yet widely appreciated. Therefore, increased awareness for perception change would be a major starting point.

The journey to age equality is this year’s UN theme for the day and achieving it will take innovation for social protection to respond to specific country challenges.

Jacob Richards Opolot
Chairperson, Uganda Parliamentary Forum on Social Protection.