By Klao Bell, Senior Staff ReporterDORCAS AMORE walks with a limp. But that does not prevent the 74-year-old from hobbling around a small Portland villa cleaning the toilets and placing fresh flowers on the table.
She says she has to work. This, along with State welfare grants, is a key source of income. Ms. Amore lives in a wooden two- room house, on top of a mound at the end of a lane surrounded by flowering trees in Portland.
When The Gleaner news team visited, she was vivacious and appeared healthy, in spite of her limp. It was hard to picture her lying on the floor having fainted from hunger.
"I fainted here two times waiting for something to eat," she disclosed. This happened when she was bedridden earlier this year, having broken a foot and three toes in a fall.
Without children or a husband, she devoted her life to raising other people's children and now shares the little she has with a 15-year-old ward.
Ms. Amore's expenses are higher than her income. She has to pay utility bills, including light, water and cooking gas, in addition to the annual lease of $1,000 per year for the land on which she has her little house.
DEVELOPMENT ISSUES
Ms. Amore typifies the findings of the Regional Intergovern-mental Conference on Ageing held in November in Santiago, Chile, where it was revealed that: "conditions with respect to economic security in many of the Latin American and Caribbean countries are insufficient and inequitable, especially for women, rural inhabitants and ethnic and racial groups."
The economic welfare of elderly persons was treated as a development issue at the conference and from that a "Regional Strategy for the Im-plementation in Latin America and the Caribbean of the (2002) Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing" was put forward.
Dr. Denise Eldemire-Shearer, the chairperson for the National Council for Senior Citizens (NCSC), who represented Jamai-ca said, "there are great needs among the elderly but the needs are different. Among men there are greater social needs, while women require more economic support."
The Regional Strategy calls on policy makers to improve the economic situation of senior citizens by making skills training as well as new technologies available to them, "to help them remain in the labour market and to generate and strengthen income-producing activities and projects. The strategy also calls for "the creation of jobs with shorter working hours that are more in keeping with labour-market demand."
LIFE IS A STRUGGLE
Through non-governmental organisations, the NCSC and the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, there are 612 senior citizens clubs which help seniors to learn computer, craft and other skills. There are some 337 income-generating projects such as chicken farming.
But still, for many elderly persons like Dorcas Amore, life is a struggle. She is one of the 1,295 elderly people in Portland who are on the programme for Advace-ment through Health and Edu-cation (PATH) Programme. A-cross the island, it is estimated that more than 10 per cent of the current 180,000 registrants are seniors.
While Ms. Amore is thankful for the Government grant, it still does not allow her to take care of sone of her greatest concerns.
"All I want is help to build a toilet in here. Mi soon can't manage to climb the hill to the toilet. The little money can't do for that," she told The Gleaner team, while pointing to the outhouse on the steep incline behind her house. She wants to add a proper toilet to the makeshift bathroom attached to her house.
