A Case of not Caring Enough for our Senior Citizens

It is highly commendable that the local sports officials, who will be hosting the second Test Match between Zimbabwe and the West Indies in Dominica later this month, thought of issuing promotional tickets to our local senior citizens.

Unfortunately, it did not occur to them that most of the senior citizens could encounter serious difficulty and inconvenience in trying to obtain the tickets. And it was indeed a sad spectacle to witness scores of elderly persons standing in queues in the hot morning and afternoon sun, waiting to receive a pass to the venue of the upcoming Test Match. Complaints were voiced as these older persons were made to proceed at a snail's pace to the ticket booth on the stadium grounds.

That irritatingly slow pace could obviously have been avoided with due consideration being given to the special case of the senior citizens in the initial planning of domestic matters relative to the Test Match. An imaginative and humane method could have been devised to prevent our senior citizens from enduring such discomfort. They surely deserve much better treatment than what they had to undergo. It was a gruelling test of their physical endurance to stand for extended periods and occasionally move forward slowly in the hot sun for several hours. Many of those older persons took as many as seven or more hours before they could get to the ticket booth from their starting point, a mere sixty feet away!!! This writer takes the view that the sacrifice made was too costly for a free ticket. That could only be attributed to unimaginative planning by the aforementioned sports administrators. This is not about politics but about us Dominicans, who should show kinder consideration towards each other. It is about the need to show more respect for the senior citizens who have made their contribution to building our country.

Much of the time spent in a slow-moving line could have been put to productive use at the homes of these senior citizens or elsewhere. These elderly persons are far from idle and inactive, and would have been happier doing something else.

The concern of this writer is not just about the physical discomfort suffered by the senior citizens but also the indignity to which they have been subjected as none of the sports officials seemed to care about the ordeal they went through. Many of them, including this writer, left the stadium grounds, after receiving their tickets, physically exhausted and with the thought of not wanting to repeat that unpleasant experience.

This writer is, accordingly, of the view that the relevant sports officials and administrators should take our senior citizens seriously enough to make a public apology to them for the unnecessary ordeal they endured in the process of trying to secure their tickets to the upcoming Test Match alluded to.

Alfred C. Leevy