International Day of Older Persons Need for reviving moral and humanitarian values stressed

Chitwan : The need of promoting moral education among the youths has been emphasized as the country marks the International Day of Older Persons today in the context of the older persons facing negligence from own families and children.
With changing values and the trend towards the nuclear family amidst the growing modernization, moral values that bounded families together in the past are on the wane, according to scholars. The older persons irrespective of which class they belong have been facing neglect and are being deprived of family care and solace.
In the observation of the patron of the Galeshwar Ashram Devghat, Peethadhish Atmananda Giri, an increasing number of senior citizens is becoming neglected and forlorn these days. Giri has been running a shelter for the elderly people. More than 200 aged people are living at the shelter.
According to Giri, the humanitarian and moral values are declining in society especially among the younger generation. He says there are very old people in the shelter he is running who have been abandoned by their children whether they are in Nepal or are living abroad.
“A growing number of older parents are neglected or abandoned by their own children these days, depriving them of love and care when it is most neeed,” Giri shared.
In many instances in rich families the older parents remain behind as the watchmen of the house while their children migrate to the U.S.A. or Australia or U.K. or other foreign countries. In some of the cases although the children living abroad call their older parents to the countries of their residence, the parents refuse to go there as they fear of isolation because their children are busy in work throughout the day and seldom have quality time to spend with their parents.
Rather the older parents like to stay back in Nepal as they can visit relatives and spend time at their neighbours’ house. But they are living a painful life as they cannot sell their property and they have to live alone in most of the cases or in the care of some salaried attendant.
Here, Giri has a suggestion to the state and the policy-makers: ‘The situation cannot improve until moral education is promoted through school and university curriculum.’
In the view of Ramji Adhikari, who has been operating Humanitarian Service Centres at 11 places across the country, humanitarianism is there in society but it was deteriorating of late. His observation is that these days love and respect for older parents has become something of a ritualistic to share on social sites like Facebook or Instagram on Father’s Day or Mother’s Day, and not the real love and respect from the heart.
He says that the culture of respecting and looking after one’s ailing and aged parents has been declining in our society. Adhikari is also of the view that this is because of the failure to include moral education in school curricula.
More than 550 helpless older people are sheltered at the Humanitarian Service Centres Adhikari has been operating. He says the old-age homes across the country are full of older people who are abandoned or neglected.
He also suggested taking school children on an observation tour of the old-age homes so that they could internalize humanitarian values and service to the elderly. RSS