Build nursing homes for the elderly – Opposition MPs ask government

Opposition Members of Parliament have called on the government to prioritize the construction of free houses or establish nursing homes for the elderly people in Uganda to ensure they live a dignified life.

The call was made by Fortunate Nantongo (Kyotera District Woman MP), Allan Mayanja (Nakaseke Central), Hillary Kiyaga (Mawokota North) and Joyce Bagala (DWR Mityana) during the press briefing ahead of the commemoration of the International Elderly Day.

Decrying the poor living conditions of some elders, Nantongo called for the provision of decent housing to the most vulnerable senior citizens and to ensure that the selection of the beneficiaries should be done transparently.

“The elderly need a programme for housing, in some countries, there are nursing homes, where the elderly go and receive medical care and have access to all the services that they need,” Nantongo said.

“You find so many of our elders in houses alone, some don’t even have houses, they are dying of hunger, and they aren’t being taken care of, however these elderly…in their youthful years contributed so much to society. So, the government needs to come up with a program that ensures the establishment of nursing homes for these people, said pointed out.

Similar sentiments were shared by Bagala who asked the government to copy from the Buganda Kingdom that is implementing a similar housing project for the elderly.

She remarked: “You find that in so many rural areas, there are elderly people who don’t have where to stay. I think the government can provide housing and protection for these elderly people. That is why I want to appreciate the Kabaka for doing [it] in Buganda, but then it can’t only happen in Buganda. So the Government can take over this initiative to build low-cost housing for the elderly.”

Mayanja also backed the proposal of free housing to ensure the elderly live a dignified life. “These elders need services like medical insurance and free housing. They need to be given free transportation wherever they want to go. They need special attention because these are the senior citizens. These are the encyclopedias in our villages and country. We lose most of them because of unfair treatment.”

The Opposition legislators also intensified calls for the increase in the age limit of the beneficiaries of the Social Assistance Grant for Empowerment (SAGE). They noted that although Shs97bn was allocated in the 2023/2024 national budget for this purpose, 43,559 eligible elders who are above 80 years are currently excluded due to errors on their National IDs.

Kiyaga described as unfortunate the failure by the government to pay these funds on time which leads to the accumulation of arrears as the money isn’t remitted on time, thus forcing the elders to go months without receiving the funds on time.

It’s very unfortunate that despite giving the elders Shs25,000, the government gets to the extent of not fulfilling this little promise. “We are here to ask the government to take this as a priority. Unfortunately, it gets to many months minus the government fulfilling it,”

“Let us lower down the years sincerely speaking, when you go to our villages, 80years is too much, by 80years, somebody can’t even access these funds, so since we have 65years for retirement, we should crop it to the SAGE too such that we match up with the retirement age, said Kiyaga.

Mayanja too questioned why the age cap for SAGE should be placed at 80 years yet the official retirement age for public servants stands at 65 years. He agreed that the SAGE age limit should be reduced to 65 years to match with retirement age.

Nantongo also re-echoed the need to increase the amount paid out to the elders. She said: “Our main challenge as the Opposition is that this money is too little considering our economy and how society is moving very fast. So we are looking at increasing this amount of money.”