Saffrey wants Gov’t to protect seniors from being robbed of their homes

President of the Barbados Alliance to End Homelessness (BAEH) Kemar Saffrey is calling on Government to introduce laws that will bring an end to elderly folks being forced out of their homes.

Though not able to give statistics, Saffrey said he is concerned that while World Elder Abuse Awareness Day was celebrated on Tuesday, too many of the elderly individuals who are now homeless were allegedly robbed of their homes by relatives.

Saffrey said Barbados is in dire need of stronger laws to safeguard the protection of elderly citizens.

He insisted that it is not right that elderly persons who have worked hard to pay mortgages to own their properties should be denied the right to live in them, unless it is a situation where they are being placed in a nursing home for special care.

Saffrey said: “In most cases it is either their home or their land that they are being put off of. People are living on the streets and have homes but the families are refusing to take care of them. We have also seen cases where the elderly have been put out of their homes while the family members are living in their homes and not taking care of the homeless in any form or fashion. This is something that has been going on for a while and we would like to see it being tackled from a policy level.”

Saffrey explained that the BAEH has drafted a document outlining proposed strategies which he said are being used in other Caribbean islands that the Government can adopt to address the issue of the elderly being thrown out of their homes and the general abuse of this vulnerable group.

He said: “We need to address this because then the hospital will always be that source where people can carry people and drop off people. You are going to have that problem where the hospital is a source of refuge for some people.

“A lot of them suffer from mental health challenges, and that is another thing that people don’t know how to deal with. Obviously people don’t always have the money to put them into a nursing home and then they might not get them into the Geriatric Hospital fast enough to get them from within the house.

“So we are not saying that everybody does it to neglect their loved ones, but in some cases there are different reasons why there is abuse. We also find that everybody wants to own a piece of the rock. And so if everybody could force everybody out of the house to have the land and property for themselves they would. This could only be addressed through policy.” (anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb)