“In Catania, Adrano, Bronte, Giarre, Mascali, Paternò, Raddusa, Randazzo and Scordia we brought together young people and elderly people to break down generational barriers, to promote what we called shared life paths. A way of discovering the potential of pensioners, a resource often wasted in a province where over the last ten years the over 65s have gone from 18.5 to 22 percent of the total population. And the old age index, just to quote another Istat data, has jumped from 121 to 157 percent”.
The general secretaries of Uil Pensionati Sicilia and UilP Catania, Claudio Barone and Maria Pia Castiglione, demand “more attention to the elderly resource” underlining how much there is a need for interventions for active aging “also implemented starting from good practices such as the project , entitled Shared Life Projects, which was organized with our collaboration by Adoc, Ada Con and Ada Catania with funding from the Region”.
“The ageless comparison – add Barone and Castiglione – is certainly useful for the elderly, for example faced with the need for computer literacy which is becoming increasingly urgent. But we at UilP also know how much pensioners can be of help to younger people. For this reason, with our national leader and former Uil general secretary Carmelo Barbagallo, we have long launched a campaign to ask political institutions for the civil service of active elderly people. The operational areas? From school tutoring to professional training, from support to homeless people to assistance for the most vulnerable, to environmental protection”.
For the secretaries of UilP Sicily and Catania, “our communities change but the social network does not adapt enough”. “We want to give a voice – they add – to those who often have no voice. Our long battle to obtain a law on non-self-sufficiency has recently ended, but we are already forced to engage in another to denounce the ineffectiveness of this reform caused by lack of funds. The most vulnerable, meanwhile, suffer from the deficiencies of welfare and health services, in Catania as much and more than other areas of the country, while protests are multiplying due to the increasingly difficult access to the fragmented and convoluted system of booking medical services in public facilities. And the ASP did not receive any response to our request to convene the Health Committee to address the issue.”
Claudio Barone and Maria Pia Castiglione conclude by recalling “the alarm we have raised among elderly men and women due to the growing risk of fraud”. “We too, in synergy with the Adoc consumer association, are facing this authentic national emergency but obviously it is not enough. More investments in safety and prevention are needed. The State makes its presence felt where it is really needed.”
: “Catania, the population is aging. The elderly are a wasted resource” – BlogSicilia){kind=link}