My attention has been drawn to a Parliamentary Bill; The Pensions (Amendment) Bill, 2024.
This Bill aims to cater for the cushioning of the retirees against the impact of the rapidly rising cost of living. It proposes an automatic cost of living upward adjustment to gratuities, pensions, and any other allowances payable and due to retirees.
Let it be averred that if any Bill can be termed timely, this is it. That the cost of living has shot through the roof (actually, the sky) cannot be gainsaid. Everything, from food to fuel to public transport, name it, has gone up.
This has impacted terribly on the retirees. As the evangelical songwriter said, ‘Some things I used to do, I (can’t) do them anymore’. One can paraphrase the refrain, ‘There is a high change, since I have (retired)’. The situation is pathetic for retirees.
No wonder the vehicles of retirees are off the road. Insurance premiums, like any other cost, have been hiked. And now some smart economist has re-introduced the road licence cost through the back-door. These same vehicles which have been knocked off the road by fuel cost, insurance, running costs, name them, are going to attract other levies. Wait for the bomb-blast that will come in June, when the good professor reads the budget. You will hear thunder and lightning.
So, a Bill that seeks to provide succour to retirees is verily welcome. I, as a retiree, read it with a lot of joy. Surely goodness and mercy were following each other in tandem, heading straight for poor us? God bless the MP who could think of this!
But really, I was too hasty when I ascribed a blessing to this MP. My hopes were soon dashed. I was following a mirage. And, true to the principles of such mirages, it receded to a yonder where I could not reach it. My thirst would have to wait.
Section 2 (1E) of the Bill provided me with the killer blow; a coup de grace of sorts. What I thought was a delectable dish for me and my fellow retirees was but an Abunwas trick, aimed at having me eat my lump of ugali with the smell of a neighbour’s roasting meat as a kitoweo. Just that. Like the biblical soldier who doubted that the price of food would fall during the siege of Samaria, I would see this feast with my own eyes, but I would not partake of it.
These price increases had nothing to do with me. I did not need a cushion. If I fell due to these huge price increases, that was my own business. I retired too early to benefit from the provisions.
In effect, the Bill was cobbled to cater only for those who would retire after it had been enacted. That means that the cushion mentioned in the proposed Act only applied to those who would retire later than me, and others like me; quod erat demonstrandum.
If you want my honest opinion, this assumption is intellectually a skeleton. It makes no sense at all.
Observe: If the aim is to cushion retirees, what is the rationale of carefully excluding some members of the club? Is it to confine them to the gutter? To show disdain for that class of humans? To reveal to them what a low opinion you have for such as them? To show them how useless to the society you feel they are?
Is it to hasten their demise; to clear them from the face of the earth? To murder their spirit? Throw them into depression, and hold seminars in Mombasa and Naivasha, or even abroad, to discuss issues which affect Senior Citizens, (so-called), that are shortening their lives?
Pray, can someone explain to me what could motivate a human being to think along those lines?
I am talking here of someone who was (most likely) taught by a teacher, who has since retired. The teacher probably bought a car with their benefits. They can’t now afford to run that car due to the costs I have mentioned above. That teacher voted for this same MP; when he goes home, he meets and greets that teacher, who cannot run his car, buy break, meat, sugar, most things, since the meagre pension cannot enable them to do so. The teacher is now emaciated and sickly, and is trudging home on foot. Yet that is the man this MP feels does not need to be cushioned against inflation.
Has callousness been like this? Has insensitivity? Discrimination? Preferential treatment?
God himself told the Israelites, “Come, let’s reason together…” and if Godhead could utter such an oracle, I would utter it to all the MPs: come, let’s think. Critically, please.
Everybody is affected by the rising cost of living. What someone used to get as pension five years ago, is now almost a half its real value. Meat has gone from 160/- to 480/-. Unga has climbed to 200/- up from 60/-. Beans have shot from 40/- a tin to 340/-. Fuel was 70/-. It is now 210/-.
Just as the MPs need a cushion (and they have it; quite thick and soft), these poor retirees need to be afforded some succour. They are suffering seriously. Many of them do not have the wherewithal to make their voices heard. You have ensured they don’t see the inside of Parliament; you have declared a battle on the aged. So you youngsters can sit in Parliament and come up with such Bills and acts which spell doom to your fore-sires, as if we didn’t give you birth! (Yet we did.)
Yet, why should our descendants throw us under the bus? I urge them, especially the originator of this Bill: drop this provision. Drop it. And the retirees who will read this, sharpen your swords of insurrection. The battle-lines are drawn! Let’s not watch as our rights are trampled upon.
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