Daily Times

They say, “Old is Gold,” and I suspect, it is true. Everything grows with age. Knowledge, wealth and experience, you name it. The only things that suffer attrition are man’s health and vitality. Quite understandable since the cycle of life has to end with decay and death. But in most cases, old age is more than compensated by experience and wisdom, for which there are no short-cuts and come only with time and age. The climax and glory of the age are measured not by the gleefulness of its youth, but by the depth of knowledge and richness of the experience of its elderly and senior citizens, who have lived long and deep to acquire these treasures.

For several centuries, the world retained its ecological balance, but towards the beginning of the modern age, largely due to the advancements of medical science and discoveries of new treatments of diseases, the number of senior citizens around the world started growing exponentially. In 1950, there were about 200 million people aged over 60. That number is expected to reach 1.2 billion by 2025. While the number of senior citizens in the “developing world” is likely to stand at 850 million.

According to another survey in 2019, almost 15 million people living in Pakistan are aged over 60, which makes about seven per cent of the country’s total population. The proportion of older people is expected to rise to 12 per cent in 2050, with 40 million people in Pakistan aged over 60.

These figures show the significant increase of our elderly and senior citizens, which require the immediate attention of Pakistani rulers. The Western nations have taken timely care of their senior citizens. A host of facilities and concessions have been formulated by various social security schemes to ensure their comfort after they retire from a hard and hectic life.

The senior citizens in Pakistani society are cast aside as rotten and of no use to society

The senior citizens in Pakistani society, on the other hand, are cast aside as rotten and of no use to society. Instead of honouring them for their contributions in their respective fields, they are given a raw deal in virtually all spheres of life and considered dead and gone after their age of superannuation. Ironically, these are the senior citizens who have to carry the major financial burden of their house-holds (rather than their younger lot) by bearing the brunt of expenditure on many family chores such as Eid, marriages of grandchildren, rewarding them on their achievements, fulfilling their timely needs, meeting sacrificial obligations, giving charities, Zakat, Sadaqat and providing subsistence to the needy and deserving relations and the poor people around them etc.

If the government can’t provide them with financial help through social security schemes, the government could lend them some dignity by rationalizing tariffs of taxation to such seniors who have given a lifetime of public service to this country.

This segment of the society has saved their lifetime savings to invest it in the National Savings Schemes (the only conduit open to them for their secure investment) to earn a reasonable dividend to meet their domestic expenditure and to make their both ends meet. They are attracted to these Saving Schemes because those are documented and secure against all frauds. Moreover, besides earning their monthly dividends, they can withdraw their capital in case of an emergency. This, I call their life-saving venture, which gives them a modicum of peace of mind.

But our financial managers have vowed not to let them have their peace. In a patently unjust manner, they have straightaway started deducting tax from the monthly dividend earned by senior citizens at a heavy 10 per cent whereas such deductions should have been made after the gross dividend crosses the tax-free limit or on assessment of annual earnings, and then not to adjust this already deducted tax against the payable total tax. At worst, the FBR eventually also taxes Pension and Behbood accounts of senior citizens; having initially projected it as relief for them with no deductions at source.

If this segment invests in Saving Schemes, which only protect their savings at nominal dividend without multiplying their investment, these investments should not have been taxed at all. The prime minister is urged to direct the FBR to exempt both Pension and Behbood Senior Citizen Accounts from tax assessing all their earnings from national savings against the regular income bracket of salaried individuals and adjust the tax deducted at the source, which should not be more than five per cent. Only then, the take-home dividends of Senior Citizens would be deemed to have earned a bit of respectability, given the shameful fall of the Pakistani rupee against all world currencies. The buying power of Pakistani elderly citizenry would still be less than 40 per cent on a world scale.

Shelter remains the other responsibility that the state has been neglecting for too long. The real estate sector is so woefully horrible that small fries like senior citizens–who have no wealth other than their honour–must be kept miles away from this bounty. They must not have forgotten how, in the nineties, the senior citizens even lost their seed money in the Zardari-sponsored Islamabad New City Project.

As one’s age progresses to 70, the first great news awaiting a senior citizen is that he is no longer eligible for medical insurance or any kind of loan because he does not hold any office. If you try convincing the relevant authorities that after retirement, it was natural for your regular pay to be stopped, they seem hell-bent on assuming that without regular pay, you are a vagabond, and hence, not very trustworthy. Therefore, you are ineligible for any insurance or loan. However hard you may argue with them that you had saved enough money to generate sufficient income to meet all future liabilities and even to repay any loan or interest thereon, but they are still not ready to oblige you. At last, you wisely step aside suspecting that any further attempt on your part might lodge you in a place which you have all along been avoiding to go.

If you plan to travel widely in your time of leisure, and you go to get a driving license, they say you are over-aged, and hence not fit to drive a vehicle. If you decide not to sit idle and start some work, no job is offered to you because of being past age. All your life, you have been paying all your taxes and liabilities with due diligence like a responsible citizen. But as soon as you put on the robes of a senior citizen, all benefits and privileges of daily life are bolted shut and you are not permitted to lead a life of your own.

As things stand today, senior citizens are no longer treated as a legal entity and have no rights similar to those of other Pakistanis, one can conclude that they are not the inhabitants of this planet. My gut feeling says that the government would feel much happier and relieved if all senior citizens were deported to Moon.

The writer is a former member of the Provincial Civil Services, and an author of Moments in Silence