HARARE, 2 July 2007 (IRIN) - Zimbabwe's seven-year economic crisis has made the elderly, who make up 10 percent of the country's 12 million people, even more vulnerable.
"The situation for older persons, who, by definition, are people over the age of 60, and because of their mental, physical and poor financial status are considered vulnerable, is sad, owing to the hyperinflationary environment that is affecting the country," Priscilla Gavi, director of Help Age, a national voluntary organisation promoting the welfare of the aged, told IRIN.
The decline is evident in institutions for the elderly, which are mainly funded by independent donors, but whose contributions were "too little and a token considering what is required on the ground", Gavi said.
Most homes have been hit hard by an annual inflation rate of around 4,000 percent, and unable to cope with the steep increase in the cost of essential services such as health, water and electricity.
Daily living in Zimbabwe has been characterised widespread shortages of basic commodities and foreign currency. Since the start of the crisis in 2000, donors have either scaled down operations, citing a harsh operating environment, or pulled out.
Unaffordable cost of living
But even when donors were willing to help, Gavi said they tended to insist on income-generating projects for the old, a requirement that "took a lot of convincing" because the process of drawing up proposals was long and took time.
Irene Gwindi, a who has worked since the late 1990s as caregiver at Chinyaradzo, an old-age home in the populous southwestern suburb of Highfields in Harare, the capital, recalled the days when looking after the elderly was easy because funds and donations were never a problem.
"The speed at which things have deteriorated is unbelievable," Gwindi told IRIN. "In the winter season, like now, our inmates would be guaranteed of at least five blankets each from donors, the business community and other well-wishers, but now we have to struggle to keep the old people warm because donations are not forthcoming."
Chinyaradzo's occupants include people abandoned by their families or thrown out of their houses after ownership wrangles; others were picked up off the streets and there are even some of foreign origin, with no known relatives to look after them in Zimbabwe.
Although the Harare municipality subsidises the city's old age homes by meeting a percentage of their water and power expenses, the institutions are struggling to foot their bills.
"Old people's homes use a lot of water because there is much washing that takes place, while the consumption of electricity is high, and on many occasions the authorities have threatened to cut us off due to non-payment," said Gwindi.
Elderly often face higher risks
Water cuts are frequent, exposing the occupants to greater risk of communicable diseases, while power cuts often force them to spend cold nights in the dark. A severe shortage of foreign currency means service providers cannot maintain or replace the ageing water purification and distribution equipment, or import enough power from neighbouring countries.
In the old days there used to be enough food to guarantee a balanced diet, now the old people at the home where Gwindi works survive on plain tea and two slices of bread in the morning, and thick maizemeal porridge and beans or dried kapenta [dried fish] for lunch and supper.
"That means they easily fall sick because of poor nutritional standards; worse still, we have to struggle to meet their medical expenses, considering the high cost of ensuring treatment for them, that is if there is any help available at health centres," said Gwindi.
Like all other sectors, the health-delivery system has been affected by the plummeting economy: drugs are in short supply in hospitals and clinics, thousands of doctors and nurses have fled to other countries in search of better working conditions, strikes are frequent, medication costs and consultation fees have shot through the roof.
Bumhudzo Old People's Home, in the dormitory city of Chitungwiza, about 35km south of Harare, is in a state of disrepair: the roof leaks when it rains and the broken windows cannot keep the cold winds out.
The institution's 40 residents sleep on dilapidated beds and despite repeated calls for well-wishers to replace the old furniture, no help has been forthcoming for the last three years, said a caregiver, who added that their work had been made more strenuous by the flight of assistants to other countries in search of better jobs.
"Our wages are poor because of the poor financial position of the institution and, as a result, caregivers are shunning the home, choosing instead to become cross-border traders or migrate to other countries, where they get better salaries as housemaids or nurse aides," she said.
It has also been difficult to obtain wheelchairs for residents who needed them, and there were often no ambulances available to ferry the sick to hospital, even in emergency cases, which forced the home to hire expensive private transporters.
Life outside the homes
Life can be even harder for the elderly living outside of institutions. "Older persons' institutions are limited and only cater for a fraction of this needy section of the population. Many of them are either living by themselves or are looked after by relatives, and their plight is more disturbing in cases where, because of the AIDS pandemic, they are forced to provide care for children left behind by their parents," Gavi said.
Most of those who lived outside institutions would have been informally employed and therefore had no pensions to fall back on, she said, but even those who had retired from formal employment barely scraped by because their pensions were too small.
Maharagwe Munongwa, 70, a retired driver in Harare, received only Z$10,000 (about US0.83 at the parallel market exchange rate of about Z$120,000 to US$1) as monthly pension. He never collects it because it would cost him more than that to fetch it from the payout point.
Last year his only son, who is divorced, moved to Canada to take up menial jobs, leaving him to look after three schoolgoing grandchildren, the eldest of which is 14 years old.
Zimbabwe closed all legal money transfer agencies last year, so even though his son regularly remits money to the family via an informal cash-transfer service, Munongwa is often at the mercy of the agent who runs it.
"Sometimes we go for two months without receiving anything from that young man [the agent] who misinforms my son that he is giving us the money. I am diabetic, and when the money is delayed I suffer a lot, while my grandchildren sometimes go hungry," he told IRIN.
"While I appreciate that things are tough in this country, and my son is toiling to make ends meet abroad, I now burden my children because I frequently fall ill, while, given my advanced age, I cannot give them enough attention."
Little state support
The government's social welfare fund provides little financial support to the elderly, disbursing a paltry US$2 annually to each identified beneficiary.
For years Help Age had advocated the enactment of legislation that would link pensions to the cost of living, Gavi said. The bill has remained at draft stage, even though President Robert Mugabe had pledged full support, but there were fears that it could take a long time to be passed because the government was now broke.
At Dandaro, a retirement home for the wealthy elderly in the northern suburb of Borrowdale, Harare, the picture is very different.
Tim Staunton, 73, a former commercial white farmer, lives a comfortable life, thanks to money he had saved before his farm was taken over by the government during the compulsory acquisition of farmland that began in 2000, in which around 4,000 farmers were displaced to make way for land-hungry black settlers.
The wheelchair-bound Staunton owns a garden flat and is looked after by an experienced nurse, while his children, now living in South Africa and Australia, send him enough money to ensure his welfare; they visit him at least twice a year and take him on holiday.
"Things could have been better had it not been for the economic crisis in this country," he told IRIN, "but I would not say I am suffering that much."
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