New centre supporting vulnerable elderly

A new centre has been opened in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh that will assist low income elderly access to information and legal advice and provide a place where pensioners can socialise and combat loneliness. Larisa Kuznetsova, the project head, said that the Soros-Kyrgyzstan Foundation-funded initiative has an initial six-month life. “The quality of life for old people has dramatically declined since independence in 1991. Before they were honoured and supported, these days they are seen as just nothing. There are nearly 20,000 pensioners in the city of Osh, many live solitary poverty-stricken lives,” Kuznetsova said. “Under the Soviet Union, average monthly pensions secured retired people quite well, allowing them to buy food and clothes, to pay for public utilities and even to cover costs of trips to visit their relatives,” said Natalya Bashieva, deputy mayor of Osh. But today most pensioners get just US $8 per month to survive on, while a minimum for survival is around $50. “It is extremely hard to survive on such a pension,” Bashieva said. According to a survey carried out by the new centre, most retired people in Osh want more services and lack access to legal information, as well as a social centre where people can gather away from the tiny apartments where most live alone. Ekaterina Mitrofanovna is 81 and her family emigrated to Russia five years ago. “I have only a niece in this city, but she does not live with me. This centre gives me a unique opportunity to meet other pensioners. Last week I met someone here I hadn’t seen for 20 years!” The centre is also serving as a place where public officials and politicians can be called to account by the city’s elderly. At the end of March an official from the Osh electricity department came to listen to pensioners’ complaints about the high price of power. “We hope the visit will lead to a new policy and our bills will come down,” Ekaterina Mitrofanovna said.