The Senate Committee on Special Duties on Monday expressed the readiness of the Red Chamber to amend the act which established the National Senior Citizens Centre to enhance its efficiency.
The agency was set up in 2017 to cater for the needs of senior citizens but it eventually took off in 2022.
The chairman of the Senate panel, Senator Kaka Shehu, stated this when the director general of the centre, Emem Omokaro, defended the agency’s 2023 budget before the committee.
Kaka decried the gross underfunding of the agency meant to take care of the elderly in society.
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He said the amendment would allow senior citizens to enjoy certain privileges including healthcare and social security.
He also said the proposed amendments would seek recognition for the senior citizens in the constitution and mandate public and private sector players to contribute to their well-being apart from government arrangements for them.
The DG of the NSCC, while defending the agency’s 2023 budget, lamented that many of the programmes proposed to make life better for the aged could not be achieved due to poor funding.
She said the health insurance scheme and the issuance of multi-purpose social security identity cards, which would enable them to access facilities at very reduced prices, had yet to take off.
She said, “Our major challenge is that policymakers look down on issues affecting the senior citizens. They see it as a waste of time and money.
“For instance, we developed 11 international standard projects, and four of them were dropped.
“Our budget for capital projects is the lowest. In the 2022 budget, our capital vote was N300m out of the N2.5bn that we proposed.
“It has been reduced to N250m in the 2023 budget. We have written, advocated and begged, all to no avail.
“We are supposed to build seven model senior citizens’ centres across the six geopolitical zones and Abuja that we have already developed their standard operational model.
“Nobody is listening to us. If we get the required funding, we will take care of the elderly, especially when 70 percent of them live in the rural areas.”
