(c) Ben Small/HelpAge International
Millions of older people live in poverty across Africa. Without pensions and the loss of traditions of family support, many have no choice but to continue working in small-scale, low-wage farming or small-scale trades into old age. For people with disabilities or poor health, working may not be an option. Without a stable income, older people live precarious lives on the brink of poverty.
Social pensions are the key to solving this problem. These have great potential to reduce poverty, improve access to health care for older people and restore dignity through economic independence.
social protection in uganda
In 2011, the Government of Uganda, in partnership with the UK Department for International Development, Irish Aid and the United Nations Children’s Fund, launched the Older People Grant as part of the wider Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment (SAGE). This is a non-contributory social pension of 25,000 Ugandan shillings (US$7) per month.
In the districts where the scheme was first introduced, all seniors aged 65 and above are eligible for the scheme, except in Karamoja, where the eligibility age has been lowered to 60 to reflect declining life expectancy. had. After covering over 100,000 senior citizens, the government has rolled out the scheme in 40 more districts, but in these areas only 100 senior citizens in each sub-district will be eligible. As of June 2019, more than 160,000 seniors have registered with this system.
We continued to advocate for pensions to be made universal across Uganda, and in July 2019 this became a reality. Currently, all Ugandans over the age of 80 are eligible. Although this age is too old to effectively reach all elderly people who need help, he said it means 365,000 Ugandans will have a stable regular income. This will serve as the basis for a movement to lower the eligibility age. All existing pensioners under the age of 80 will continue to receive benefits.
How are social pensions helping Uganda’s elderly?
The amount was small, but it made a big difference to the people it reached.
(c) Ben Small/HelpAge International
“‘Pension'” is useful in my life. Getting money makes you happy. I used it to buy goats for my family. I use it to pay school fees and buy books for my children,” said Rongola, an elderly man from Napak, Uganda.
Lucho Aris, an elderly woman from Napak who is visually impaired and used to rely on handouts from the community, said: She does this to buy food when she’s hungry, to pay her school fees, and to buy plates and pots. Thanks to this, she can buy chickens to raise and sell them when she is hungry. ”
(c) Ben Small/HelpAge International
Challenges of introducing social pensions
Uganda is not the only country in sub-Saharan Africa to expand social pensions. South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Mauritius, Kenya and Zanzibar have all introduced similar universal pensions, and Mozambique is planning to introduce a life-cycle social security system that includes social pensions.
However, these programs are not without their challenges.
- Older adults may be excluded due to errors in determining eligibility or because they do not have access to required documentation.
- Mobility challenges or long and expensive travel may prevent you from reaching your pay grade.
- Due to the lack of information about the scheme, older people may not know about it and may not enroll.
- When payments are delayed, seniors often have to wait months to receive their money.
- Economic abuse, such as payroll agents demanding a portion of their money or family members stealing it, prevents seniors from getting their rights.
- Local businesses such as motorcycle taxis and market vendors may increase prices on the day of payment.
(c) Ben Small/HelpAge International
How Voice and Accountability Pressure Governments to Accountability
Addressing these challenges is key to the success of social pensions, and older people have an important role to play. By empowering them to speak up, debate with others, and have their voices heard, they can better influence decisions that affect their lives and hold governments accountable for how services are delivered. You can This helps to ensure that social pensions meet the required standards. This reduces errors, fraud and corruption and ensures that eligible people receive the right amount regularly, reliably and easily. And that means older people can demand changes to their pension system that specifically benefit them.
Voice and accountability improve the relationship between citizens and the state, as they encourage older people to be actively involved and see policies and services as a right that must meet appropriate standards. It develops confidence and helps older people identify problems and take action to address them.
From 2015 to 2018, HelpAge International set out to strengthen voice and accountability across four countries with funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. We achieved this through older adult monitoring, an approach rooted in older adult community groups, leveraging the enthusiasm and altruism of older adult leaders to:
- Informing older women and men about the social pension system
- mobilize people to register
- Assist recipients in filing complaints
- Gather evidence about scheme issues
- Advocating with government officials for policy changes and improved service delivery.
(c) Ben Small/HelpAge International
Voice and accountability through monitoring of older people in Uganda
Our Voice and Accountability Program in Uganda supported 23 Older Persons Organizations (OPAs) in 13 sub-counties in northern Uganda. We work with our partners Caritas Guru and the Karamoja Agro-Pastoral Development Programme. They are key to the program’s success thanks to their positive relationships with the community.
Together, we will train OPA members on how to effectively educate older adults about their rights and entitlements and conduct older adult monitoring. Older leaders are well-versed in social protection policy and are taught how to collect data, advocate to government, and even how to best communicate and interact with the people they visit.
(c) Ben Small/HelpAge International
The leader’s enthusiasm is key. Aba Helen Uma, a senior citizen monitor in Gulu’s Unyama sub-county, not only makes sure that paydays are announced on the radio, but also goes around the community to inform everyone once the information is released. ing. “The moment I hear about it, I immediately mobilize them so that when the SAGE staff arrives, the seniors are the first to get paid,” she said.
In addition to announcements on the radio, senior citizens’ organizations host talk shows that solicit questions and concerns about social pensions from listeners. This provides another accessible way for recipients to provide feedback.
One of the main issues they found was the distance recipients had to travel to pay points, with one in four saying 4 to 6 kilometers and one in 10 saying 7 to 10 kilometers. was moving. This means that older people usually have to pay for transportation, which can eat into their pensions.
“When we first received the payment, it was only in very remote county centers. So we went back and reported it, and more payment points were created. Now, in Yunshan. The county has three pay points,” Abar said.
In fact, with their support, the maximum distance between an elderly person’s home and their pay point has been reduced from 18 kilometers to 7 kilometers. And after filing a complaint, salary points will be better organized, and the elderly will be provided with drinking water and a place to rest in the shade while waiting.
For some seniors with mobility issues, even getting to a nearby toll point can be difficult or impossible. A proxy system was in place for alternate recipients to receive the money, but few seniors or government officials were aware of it. Elderly citizen monitors raised awareness about this provision and encouraged people to take advantage of it.
“There was one disabled person who couldn’t pay his salary,” said Lol Max, an elderly citizen monitor in Napak. “She had to be pushed up there in a wheelbarrow. Staff saw the situation and were able to convince her daughter to collect the money.”
(c) Ben Small/HelpAge International
In these scenarios, older leaders become important intermediaries with government officials. Older people are generally reluctant to speak up for themselves, and problems with literacy and mobility exacerbate this. Having a confident and skilled communicator in their shoes can help make their complaints heard.
There are limits to what local voices can achieve when decision-making about social protection policy and management is centralized. This means that local government officials do not have the power to implement change themselves and must rely on local leaders to take complaints to their superiors. However, efforts are being made to connect local seniors associations with the Uganda National Council on Seniors to ensure their voices are heard at local and national levels. But for older people living in areas where there is no one to help them connect with local authorities, their complaints are likely to go unheeded.
Where do we go from here?
Elderly monitoring is helping to increase access to social pensions for older people not only in Uganda but also in Kenya, Mozambique and Zanzibar. While this is important, it is the responsibility of each government to ensure that the public is informed about the social protection system and that there are comprehensive, accessible and effective grievance mechanisms. should be emphasized. Elderly monitoring should not be a long-term solution to fill gaps left in existing weak systems.
The work of older people’s organizations and older people’s watchdogs should remain independent and focus on advocacy, working together with governments to ensure that social protection programs achieve their goals as effectively as possible.