DUMPED AT SUNSET: Abandoned Old People Lament Their Desertion By Kith And Kin

The Nation News Reports; Ordinarily, old age should be time that one should enjoy the deserved rest and get the reward for the good works that one must have done in one’s younger days. But that is not the case with many elderly people of today. Many of them, including those who have children, have nobody to take care of them. Many of them have been abandoned by family members and are either confined to special homes or left on the streets to beg.

A visit to the Elderly People’s Home in Borokiri, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, shows that a good number of elderly people in the state capital and neighbouring states reside at the home, forcing the Catholic Church, which established it, to invest enormous resources in taking care of them.
Highlighting the challenges involved in taking care of the elderly people, Rev. Sister Mary Jane Raphael Agubosi, a matron at the home, said: “The major challenges we have is finance. Sometimes, we find it difficult to pay the workers and even the hospital bills of the inmates.
“In this home, we have 33 inmates, made up of 11 men and 22 women. We lost one of them last week. She was 107 years old. All her children have died and she was left with her grandchildren.

Asked how the old people are brought into the home, Rev. Sister Mary Jane said people come to them, begging to be accepted in the home.
She said: “Normally, we cannot go out to the street to look for elderly people. Their faith does not matter. People come to us as individuals, churches or organisations, saying that they have elderly people. We give them a form to fill.
“After that, we tell them that we would not admit people with stroke because we don’t have social workers here to help us out. So, we only admit those ones that can take care of themselves.
“Those who have children, we always advise them to bring them down here instead of leaving them at home, and they pay N 15,000. But those who don’t have children, we don’t take anything from them since we solely depend on charity.”