Population ageing and the growing number of older persons is fact of life in Fiji and that cannot be ignored in any way. Sadly, this important issues has not been addressed by the National Development Plan (NDP) consultative meetings.
Furthermore, there is also a complete absence of data from the Fiji Bureau of Statistics, renders the plan or document on Fiji’s development is not worth the consideration.
Therefore, the NDP needs to revisit their consultations and restart with the first presentation from Fiji Bureau of Statistics (FBOS).
The issues relating to Older persons and development is outlined for your kind consideration.
The significance of the older persons
A NUMBER of critical decisions about allocation of resources and social policies for the ageing community will have to be made and these are more often than not fraught with controversies as the greying generation or the silver power will gain prominence and is likely to make demands to protect its interest.
In particular, those working with the older persons can share ideas on social issues that affect families and communities as well as offer some realistic proposals for those concerned about seniors’ future to take proactive steps to find innovative solutions to confront the ageing scenario of our society, which is also shared with the ageing world. Not all is doom or gloom if we can bravely face some of the stark realities and tackle them realistically without being limited and holding on to bias in our attitudes, behaviours and actions in dealing with population ageing and older people.
Social policies in Fiji have to contend with the economic uncertainties of capital accumulation, which is an important driver for the delivery of social services, especially when we will be confronting rapid population ageing in the coming decades with a low replacement rate and given the fact of rapid migration.
One of the first items on the agenda of National Council for the Older Persons (NCOP), when it was established in 2012, was the to do the “Status of the Older Persons in Fiji. Sadly this important exercise was never done because the below zero priority of older persons and their issues.
At least 25 per cent of our population will be above 60 years of age in 2030, however, to date their healthcare and other living requirements of the ageing sector have not been examined. It is safe to assume that this will mean that productivity can slow down and consumption of social services will increase.
Effects of population ageing:
More funds will have to be set aside for healthcare and community support services.
The societal and family burdens is already increasing and will grow, and therefore it is more prudent now to prepare people to stay healthy and have savings for their retirement.
Another challenge facing social and economic policy makers is to cultivate the capacity to visualise and predict changes in the social and human environment.
Many people will retire and we will have a more ageing workforce, like the realities of ageing cane and rice farmers.
We will be confronted by the need to find continuing job opportunities for those who can work.
The acute increase in the number of older workers and retirees will pose various competing demands on the resources of our workplaces, families and communities.
The young and able-bodied labour force is being seriously affected by the PALM scheme of Australia.
The training of family members as the case of old (60+) looking after the very old (70+) and the old, (80+).
The status of the older persons
The Status of Older Persons Survey (SOPS) would have helped in understanding the socio-economic and demographic changes of our globalising environment, we could have then, developed a clearer sense of direction in providing relevant services to see that the older workforce and retirees can live life meaningfully and with human dignity.
Will we have the wherewithal to deal with these changing demographic profiles? Will we have the ability to generate the social and economic resources necessary to support this group of citizens and at the same time deal with the rising expectations and other competing demands of the various social and community groups?
What will happen when Fiji cannot generate sufficient resources? What hard social and economic policy decisions would have to be made on the allocations of resources in the absence a report on data on the status of the older persons?
For those who want to retire, they must have adequate savings to live on, and for those with limited savings, they will have to depend on their family members and children to help them. The FNPF has already stated the 60 per cent of the members have less than $10,000 in their pension funds.
The answers are already often fraught with trade-offs and contentions. These are important questions that need to be addressed and there are no easy solutions to the complex issues facing ageing in Fiji. Unless more capital and skilled labour resources are available and all social and community groups can work within societal means, it will indeed be difficult to improve the standard of living of our ageing work-force and population.
Longevity
Longevity is a blessing which is an indication of good traditional family care and upbringing healthy and vibrant grandparents play a pivotal role in maintaining and balancing cultural, social and peaceful family and community life.
With our aged living longer, one can expect older persons needing continued employment. The surplus older workforce compounded by the reduction of the younger labour force will be a scenario of the future as economic migration to Australia and New Zealand continue. Such an older social labour force landscape is inescapable. Therefore, Fiji society must plan for productive ageing where every older person is valued and can be engaged in meaningful jobs for which they have been trained or retrained to adapt to the workplaces in which they have worked for most of their lives.
The issue of engaging the greying generation, must be seriously reviewed as the matter has been brushed over as not a serious problem that can be postponed to the next time. The seniors need to be trained and made digitally literate so that they can become more employable in the working world, which is digitally driven.
Pensions and living in retirement
As most seniors depend on their retirement savings in the FNPF and other saving accounts, these funds must be managed prudently and safeguarded.
There have been reports of mismanagement of retirement funds and savings in some people and agencies. We must ensure that people of integrity and impeccable responsibility are elected into government to look after the institutions which manage their assets. Otherwise, seniors and their families will be depleted of their hard-earned retirement savings and funds. As those who were robbed in broad daylight through Decree reducing their legal pension by almost half.
All will end up losers if we do not have good and honest people to run our social institutions such as government bodies and private sectors. If we do not have quality people to manage them, then retirees will not be able to have a fruitful retirement, but one full of misery. Retirees’ lives will become worse and they will suffer impoverishment in the end. It is therefore crucial that our society has in place succeeding groups of people who are committed to doing the best for people through to their senior year.
Many older people will have long years to live after their mandatory retirement. In fact, the whole aspect of retirement has to be reviewed, as the older people of tomorrow will have much knowledge and expertise, which can still be tapped to contribute socio-economically to our society.
Indeed, it will be demeaning to let ageism dictate the working shelf life of the seniors. With declining population, retirement issues deserve a relook and lifelong working could be planned. Our society must be graceful in valuing the seniors and find various ways to engage them in productive and meaningful activities.
Fiji is already facing obvious changes in the demographic landscape. As one views the community in 2040, there will be about one in four persons who will be 60 years or above.
The greying tsunami
Various societies will be confronted with the tsunami of a greying generation, which will pose many challenges to cope with, and some will succeed in managing well and others may face real human miseries of a kind which can lead to family breakdowns and societal distractions, which will be less likely to abate, leading to cumulative social burdens.
Many observers tend to see social ageing as a resource to society, but this perspective is a rather romantic picture about life as we age. Such a rosy notion becomes not so rosy when resources in various societies are limited and shrinking. The social situation becomes rather bleak and gloomy when people whether young or old contend for their share of community resources, especially when there is not much to spare or redistribute. Inevitably, the ability to get access to the limited community resources will vary directly in response to those who have power to influence and control the available resources.
Ageing and social scenario
As societies transform from being young and vibrant to decrepit and sluggish with older members, the aged will be seen as less useful and worse still useless because they can be relegated to consumptive status, in short an economic liability in most economically centric societies, which we are already witnessing in Fiji.
This social scenario is already beginning to shape as people are focused on their own survival and wellbeing at the expense for a broader community wellness. We are witnessing the increase of seniors in our neighbourhoods and the villages, where more families will face increasing burdens in caring for their less mobile elderly parents.
This social burden will be more pronounced among dual-career young families and more so if they have terminally sick elderly parents. There are already instances of the old looking after the very old.
Besides social and economic costs, families may have to find more accessible social and day-care service. Along with this need for supportive care services, families will also face grief and loss of their elderly parents. More social care services to help family members cope with grief and loss will have to be set up.
The families plights
This social platform needs to set up now as the traditional family and cultural support systems are already diminishing. This further exacerbated by the departure of family care givers for aged care work abroad.
The social, psychosocial and health consequences facing the greying generation require attention too. Personnel working in health and family service settings can play a role in helping promote community care cooperatives, hospice care services and grief services that will be required to support families with elderly needing types of different social care and support. The rise in the many elderly needing healthcare and social service support will lead to dialogues on issues related to the end of life and the allocation of healthcare resources. Human service professionals will have to face such dialogues in communities and prepare families with elderly persons to have plans before life ends. This issue is already a reality as due to economic migration younger family members are settling abroad.
Both, the government and the civil society organisations, need to start training their social services workforces now, to ensure that one will have less traumatic trouble in living through the tertiary period of one’s life. Therefore, it will be helpful if social agencies involved in elderly care can engage families at the appropriate time in making end-of-life plans for elderly relatives in their frail years. Such preparations are critical as families will be better prepared to deal with issues of death and dying.
Seniors and loneliness
Another pressing elderly issue that will be faced is loneliness among the seniors. As many seniors are likely to outlive their spouses and friends, their social network will shrink and they have limited support to draw on. Lives for these lonely seniors can be miserable and they will have less and less persons to rely on if they need social care and assistance. There is need to avoid a scenario that some seniors may die in their flats without notice by neighbours or friends. Such episodes will become common when the ageing community is depleted of human resources to extend care and monitoring for the welfare of single seniors who have to fend on their own.
Housing and the seniors homes
The problems of lonely seniors are likely to become more acute, especially in ageing housing estates where rejuvenation or renewal of these neighbourhoods is slow or delayed inadvertently. It will be evident that in the next two decades we will see a number of silver neighbourhoods and villages. If attempts by the public housing authority to renew and rejuvenate these neighbourhoods are slower than population ageing in these places, then these ageing neighbourhoods will become listless and socially run down.
Currently, there only 300 plus seniors in the institutional facilities run by Government and the civil society sector. In order to revitalise these silver neighbourhoods, the seniors living in bigger flats can be given attractive offers to resize their flats so that they would be able to realise some funds for their assets and at the same time enable estate renewal to take place at a quicker space in the future as more older housing flats will be held by the seniors.
The burden of care
As many of these families have working family members, they will face the burden of care. Already the scenario of old (60+) looking after the very old (80+) is already a reality. Social breakdowns are likely to surface if there is limited access to social support and community care services delivered at the neighbourhood levels. Therefore, there will be high demand for more community-based programs to cater to the needs of families who have frail lonely seniors and those affected by dementia. The number of such families is expected to increase in the next decade. In light of the greying of neighbourhoods, more community groups, voluntary welfare organisations and healthcare groups, together with the participation of residents as well in different settings, will have to work closely and be inclusive in the provision of community care services such as home help, meals service, day care, integrated housing and community nursing.
Social care workforce
There is an urgent need to prepare family and community based social care workforce and community care cooperatives could be established to offer services, which will be more convenient and accessible to the families with lonely, frail and demented elderly needing care and attention. With the ageing population, we will likely see an increase in the number of seniors afflicted by cognitive decline leading to dementia, namely, Alzheimer’s disease. Fiji like many societies will not escape this dementia route facing some of our seniors. To prepare for and face this reality, we can encourage more innovative community efforts with funding support from public and private sources, which can lead to the formation of various social and healthcare enterprises with the involvement of the families who are interested and in need of support services.
Mental health
Another emerging area facing the seniors will be mental health issues. As we are aware, ageing does affect our physical, social and psychological well-being. In senior years, our health can deteriorate and one can be pre-occupied by worrying over it. Consequently, mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and psychosomatic problems can surface, and those unable to resolve them will face psychiatric breakdowns.
The mental health issues facing seniors require more attention because this aspect is often given less priority by healthcare policy makers as there is no return on investment. However, in recent years, there has been a shift in orientation as ageing concerns have added pressure on policy makers to provide more resources to tackle mental health issues not only for the seniors but also for the young who are victims of drugs and substance abuse.
This move has prompted more social service and voluntary organisations to implement mental healthcare programs. Mental health is already a serious social and family issues that cannot be left Band-Aid treatment of just few civil society organisations with meagre resources.
With growing mental health breakdowns among the seniors, both outpatient and inpatient treatment services will have to be arranged by healthcare providers from the public and as well as the non-profit sectors. More importantly, because of the long-term nature of their mental illnesses, the cost for care has to remain affordable and accessible.
Otherwise, the seniors with serious mental breakdowns will become more depressed because they will see themselves as a burden to their families and in some cases, they can take their lives by committing suicide. Such episodes have emerged in many advanced urban societies such as South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong.
The last but crucial matter that will be confronting Fiji ageing more transparently will be in the arena of death and dying. The aspects dealing with the preparation for death have already been discussed in some depth. The end of life matters to all of us and in particular family members who survive us.
Conclusion – An empowered community of older persons
The wellbeing and wellness of the older persons and the ageing population is the manifestations of an empowered community. In all their work particularly with disadvantaged and oppressed communities; the community development workers should ensure that, population ageing is increase dramatically, requiring urgent action for a strong and meaningful, social economic protection platform that would include:
- Freedom of spiritual wellbeing with strong family and cultural anchor. A resilient family is the key for the social protection platform and is the most effective unit for community development;
- Have access to open and democratic community structures with optimum and meaningful participation;
- Can make a real choice in lifestyle;
- Have the physical health and energy to participate;
- Are accepted for what they are;
- Have a real voice of their own, with the right to speak in their own words and be listened to;
- Have access to reliable information;
- Have access to resources that positively affect their wellbeing;
- Have self-esteem and are treated with respect and dignity;
- Believe in the right to control their own destiny;
- Have reasons to believe that participation in decision making process is meaningful and productive;
- Work and live in a non authoritarian environment with egalitarian structures;
- Collectively decide on and prioritise their own needs, issues and problems; Collectively decide on how to resolve needs, issues and problems and develop their own strategies;
- Collectively decide on future directions for their community’s development;
- Have the right not to participate in community decisions and processes;
- For women whether they have control over their own bodies and their own resources and are able set their own agendas based on their knowledge and their lived experience and their language;
- In a modest sense, we can observe in[1]dicators of whether communities increase their control of resources over a period of time. For example, we can examine in[1]creases in budgets, effects of community consultations, shorter waiting list of their child and medical care;
- Have access to social, economic and environmental impact assessments reports. The importance of including the factors relating to population ageing and older persons living with respect and dignity cannot be ignored.
- MOHAMMED HASSAN KHAN is the chairman of the Suva Relief Fund Trust (Pearce Home); convener – Fiji Pacific Network for Rights of Older Persons and a member of the National Council for Older Persons. This was his submission to The National Council of Older Persons for the National Development Plan consultations.
