Waiting for a decent old age…

…At the seashore I look not at the girls and women with fit body, but at the grandmothers in the swimsuit or the accompanying and caring grandparents. My grandmother comes to my mind. My 84-year-old grandmother had never been in the sea,  for her the only sea was Sevan, near her village, where she only had her feet wet.

When talking about older people, we first of all remember pensions, which is logical, but older people’s problems are not limited to pensions…

The Republic of Armenia Law on State Pensions has set a single retirement age for men and women at the age of 63. In 2017, the average pension for women was AMD 39 226, for men – AMD 42 822. With continued inflation, this pension can only survive.

For comparison, the value of the minimum consumer basket in Armenia at current average prices in 2018 was 61 thousand 113 AMD per month. And the price of the food basket was 34 thousand 527 AMD per month. The food basket is the minimum amount of food that a human body needs – 2412.1 kcal per day, while in 2018 the average energy consumed by the population of Armenia was 2232 kcal per capita.

Anahit Gevorgyan, Head of the Department for Elderly Affairs at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, tells WomenNet.am about many projects being put into circulation that relate to their basic needs and the improvement of bad material conditions.

“If the elderly live on only pensions or benefits, their situation cannot be considered satisfactory. This is an undeniable fact, ”said a ministry official.

There are three types of services available to elderly people in need of care but who do not have it: 24 hour care services, these are home-based services. There are 5 state and 8 non-state boarding houses in Armenia with 1340 people, 1210 of which are in the state. Seventy percent of the residents here have children.

“In addition to nursing homes, we also have home and state care centers. About 4,000 people use home care services, 1350 have state services. We also have 20-200 non-state day care centers, which visit about 2000 lonely elderly.

It turns out that out of about 400,000 elderly people in Armenia about 10,000 receive services.

There are numerous articles on the internet about the successes of people after retirement in this or that country.

Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Australia, Japan are among the best countries for the elderly. It is in these countries that the well-known expression of “age not joy” is not relevant.