Column: Simmons On Seniors, Care & More
[Opinion column written by the PLP Senator Lindsay Simmons]
Ask anyone in Bermuda who raised them, and you will hear about a grandmother whose kitchen always had something on the stove for you. A grandfather who taught you how things worked with his own hands. A neighbour who watched the whole street’s little ones so their parents could go to work. Our seniors are not a line in a budget. They are the people who built this country with their hands, and they did it so the rest of us would have something to inherit.
So here is a question worth sitting with. When the cost of living climbs, who feels it first?
It is our seniors. A person on a fixed income cannot pick up an extra shift when groceries go up. They cannot wait out inflation. When the price of food and electricity rises, it comes straight out of a budget that does not stretch and cannot grow. The people who can least afford the squeeze are often the ones feeling it hardest. That is not right, and it is not something any of us should accept quietly.
And this is not a small group, and it is not getting smaller. Bermuda is aging. By the Government’s own estimate, around one in four of us, a full quarter of the population, will soon be 65 or older. People are living longer, which is a blessing, and fewer children are being born, which is simply the math of where we are.
The difference is whether your government sees it coming and prepares, or waits until it becomes a crisis.
This PLP Government is preparing now. Under Minister Tinée Furbert and the Ministry of Youth, Social Development and Seniors, who recently won the Best of Bermuda award for Most Effective Politician, this island produced its first ever National Seniors Strategy, a real plan built around healthy ageing, age friendly communities, and letting our seniors live with dignity and independence. That is not a small thing. For all our history, this island had never once put down a national plan for how we care for the people who built it. Now we have.
And it has gone well beyond the page.
The contributory pension has been raised every single year, seven years running, so the income our seniors depend on keeps pace with the cost of living rather than falling behind it. This year the Government went further and approved a ten per cent increase for our retired public servants, the former teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters who gave their working lives to this island.
And there is a new seniors daycare centre on the way, taking shape at the old Gilbert Institute in Paget. It is being designed to be fully accessible and dementia friendly, a place where our seniors can be cared for during the day and still come home at night. That matters more than it might sound. It means a family can go to work without having to choose between their job and their mother. It means our seniors are not shipped off somewhere out of sight. They stay in their own community, near the people who love them.
Because that is the whole point. Our seniors should be able to stay in their own homes, in their own community, cared for and respected, for as long as they are able. Not sent away. Home.
None of this is finished, and I will not pretend it is simple. Some of the largest economies in the world are staring down the same challenge and struggling with it. Japan, Italy, much of Europe, even China are all aging faster than they can easily afford, reshaping their budgets and straining their healthcare systems in the process. These are nations with far deeper pockets than ours, and it is testing every one of them. Caring for an aging population, on an island our size, is a tall task.
But a PLP Government that is planning for it today, instead of waiting for it to become a crisis, is doing right by the people who did right by us.
They built this. The least we can do is make sure they get to enjoy it, and that they are looked after while they do.
- Senator Lindsay Simmons, Junior Minister for Home Affairs; Youth, Social Development and Seniors; and National Security
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