Thank you too.
Alhaj i Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka (NDC - Asawase): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to support the Statement made by the Hon Member for Ayawaso West Wuogon, who is also my “mother”.
Madam Speaker, it is said in Africa that,
“You should watch what I am today because yesterday, I was like you; tomorrow you will be like me”.
Typically, it means that when one sees an aged person and one just thinks he was stupid that is why he is weak, if one is lucky, one will wake up and one will be like him. It is very, very important that we look at our setting and re-align ourselves.
Madam Speaker, when some of us were growing up, when we were very little children, we saw how communities veered towards the aged; how everything in our communities was done with full consultation of the elderly in the community. Madam Speaker, it was not about how rich one was; it was not about how intelligent one was; it was about how old one was. It was impossible for a house or a community to take any critical decision without involving the aged.
Madam Speaker, for one reason or the other and an unfortunate adoption of
lifestyles from elsewhere, we have found ourselves at crossroads where the aged, with the greatest respect, as one of my senior Colleagues rightly mentioned, it is becoming like a crime to be old because of closely calling -- even stigmatization.
If we look at somewhere in the North where we have a camp called the Witches' Camp, when one goes there, one will never see a witch who is youthful, a young woman; all those one sees there are old women. These are mothers who have laboured and given birth to children; they have gone through thick and thin and brought them up.
When they are successful, then they say that these same mothers who could have killed them the very day they were born -- now that they are strong, when they go through some difficulties in life, they tell them that it is their mother, who laboured to bring them up all this while, who is the cause of their problems. And unfortunately, we get many of us believing this and going to dump our old persons in very unfortunate situations.
Madam Speaker, today, if we look at even the Pension Schemes that we have in our country, people put all their lives - Madam Speaker, I had the opportunity of having a peep where one sees - Even at 10.00 p.m. when one goes round offices, one sees people working just to make sure that there is progress in our country. When they retire, we meet them at the bank and they are going to withdraw that so-called pension that they have Madam Speaker, one feels sad and one asks oneself as a young person whether one will want to belong to that category of persons.
Madam Speaker, what effect do we see today? It is making almost everybody aggressive. People think that, “Hey, let's make Hey while the sun shines. Now that I am strong, let me use every means, whether legal or illegal, to acquire wealth so that I do not become like the old man that I saw.”
Madam Speaker, I think this is something that we should know that has serious effects on our economy because people are struggling to do all manner of things just to prevent a situation where they would find themselves becoming destitute.
This cannot be right, Madam Speaker. A country that thinks about its future would definitely have to factor in the aged because when it becomes very difficult, we would all admit, when it becomes very tough, whether we like it or not, we would quickly run to the old man in the house to find out, “in this situation what do I do?” This means that they are very, very important; we cannot just push them to the background.
Madam Speaker, we need to develop a system where the aged are respected and their views are brought on board in churches, in the mosques. It is said in Islam that once one hits 70 years -- Allah himself has said in the Holy Qur'an that He respects the grey such that when one hits 70 years, it is impossible for one to raise one's hands to prey without Allah listening to one's prayer. That is why we see in many Muslim communities that the Imams are very aged. The belief is that Allah, as he said, respects the aged. When these people lead, no matter their shortfalls, we believe that when they raise their hands to pray, it is accepted. These are the things that we need to bring back into our society.
When we go to churches today, and in the mosques, very important places are reserved for the rich. We have so soon forgotten the aged, the experienced. Madam Speaker, this cannot be right. What other effect does it have on the youth?
Madam Speaker, because of the way we treat the aged, one realises that when people are heading towards 60 years, then they begin doctoring their birth certificates and changing their dates of birth simply because they are afraid of getting there.
When they do these, the youth that are supposed to take over from them have to keep waiting and then there is unnecessary tension building up at the youth front, whereas the aged keep back-tracking their ages.
