By Sylvester Kumwenda
Lilongwe, October 2, Mana: Malawi on Friday joined the rest of the world in observing the International Day of Older Persons with the Minister of Gender, Community Development and Social Welfare, Patricia Kaliati urging stakeholders to end digital exclusion for older people.
This is in line with the theme for this year’s celebration “Digital Equity for All Ages: Connect, Respect and Protect Older Persons in Digital Technologies” which was developed to highlight the challenge that old persons are experiencing in terms of digital inequity.
Speaking in Lilongwe, Kaliati said a huge proportion of Malawi’s older people, who are in the range of 900, 000 to one million, do not have access to modern digital facilities and platforms, as such they are not fully benefitting from advantages of digital technologies.
“The elderly continues to be sidelined from meaningful participation in our societies because of among other things the negative stereotypes that depict them as old fashioned and out dated.
“The majority of older persons are off-line, meaning that, they are not fully participating in the day-to-day social-economic activities due to the existing digital inequity,” she said.
She, therefore, urged stakeholders and innovators that as Malawi celebrates her older people, to come up solutions that adopt a person centred and human rights approach to digital provision and safety for individuals of all ages with particular emphasis on the elderly.
“I appeal to digital service providers to give special consideration in their design and provision of services to inclusion of older persons. This could include but not limited to presentation of messages in large fonts and in ensuring that steps or instructions for a particular service are short, simple and easy to follow.
“As for the members of the general public, this is the time for us to take part in ensuring that we bring an end to the stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination the elderly face as they access digital services,” said Kaliati.
On violence against older people, Kaliati said it was horrifying and disturbing to see how older persons continue to be abused, physically injured and even killed by some community members in some parts of the country.
On average, she said, 10 older persons are killed each year through mob justice.
“I would like to call upon all Malawians to take action to ending the atrocities that older persons are facing in the country.
“Let us work together to create a society where older persons can walk, work, sleep and live without the fear of being abused, assaulted and killed,” she said.
Andrew Kavala, Country Director for Malawi Network for the Elderly People concurred with Kaliati on digital inequity for the older persons.
He said the older persons miss out on important information that is shared on digital platforms.
“We need to look at the efforts being made to ensure that our older persons are not left behind.
“For example, most of the COVID-19 messages have also been on line, what we need to do is to evaluate what we are doing to see to it that our elderly people are also accessing these and other messages,” he said.
One of the older persons in the country, John Peter Phiri, from Area 25 in Lilongwe said most of the older persons are sidelined due to the perception of poor literacy levels amongst them.
However, as of now government is implementing various activities like adult literacy to make sure older persons have access to literacy materials.
October 1 was set aside by the United Nations as a global day of raising awareness about issues and challenges affecting the elderly, and to highlight the important contributions that older people make towards the society.
Does she know that we are experiencing viewing interruptions despite paying for the prescribed chanels on gotv? We are really confused and even afraid to pay for this month prescription for fear of paying for interrupted services which is sickening. Why such interruptions dr minister or is it my gotv set that is faulty?