Senior citizens striving to have access to financial assistance, other facilities

PESHAWAR: Zakir Khan, 64, who is a heart patient, has been living a miserable life as he has no male child and source of income to meet his needs.However, the senior citizen from Peshawar is still hopeful to get “Senior Citizen Card”.He had applied for it four years ago in a bid to seek financial assistance and other facilities. The government enacted the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Senior Citizens Act 2014 to protect the rights of senior citizens.“I have three daughters of whom two are getting education. My daughters are managing the expenses of their education through tuitions,” the senior citizen living at Yakatoot locality of the provincial capital told The News.Like Zakir Khan, 0.8 million senior citizens in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have applied for the card but it could not be issued to them to date.Shawas Khan, 67, a farmer by profession, said other countries provided health, old age shelters and other incentives to their senior citizens, but they did not have these facilities in Pakistan.He said that successive governments did not care about the senior citizens.According to the Community Research and Development Organisation, there are approximately 10 million senior citizens who constitute 7 percent of the total population of the country. The figure is estimated to reach 40.33 million by 2050.The number of individuals aged over 60 year of age in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is estimated to be 2.8 million.The Senior Citizen Act was passed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2014. This is the first ever law for protection of rights of older people in Pakistan.However, older people in the province are still waiting for implementation of the act. The acts say that, “A senior Citizen may, on completion of his 60 years of age, apply for the senior citizen card.”The government announced the registration of senior citizens through a newspaper advertisement in February 2018. An official of Social Welfare Department said older people started submitting the registration forms at their respective district social welfare offices after the advertisement.He said though the department has received 800,000 forms so far, not a single Senior Citizen Card has been issued.The act further said that senior citizen would have financial support, separate counters in hospitals, concession in medical bills and separate wards at hospitals.However, the older women and men are still waiting to receive these provisions. Under the act, people who reached 60 years of age can apply and would be issued senior citizens cards under which these card holders would be extended free access to parks, libraries, and recreational places.They are also entitled to financial assistance, concession in medicines, separate medical wards in public sector hospitals and other incentives.But the pledge remains unfulfilled despite the passage of four years.The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is only making verbal commitments with the senior citizens instead of implementing the act.The previous PTI government had time and again issued directives for implementation of the act and provision of incentives to senior citizens under the law, but to no avail.Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Shaukat Yousafzai made a commitment at a recent event to implement the act.However, he said the government was still facing problems to implement the act as making rules of business for incentives to senior citizens were still under process. Deputy Speaker of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Mehmood Jan said the PTI government was committed to implementing the Senior Citizens Act passed by its previous government.

from The News International - Peshawar http://bit.ly/2Ya3IKu