I notice that the new concession system for Senior Citizens provides for a card for $60 a month for unlimited rides on buses and trains.
The system tends to overlook the fact that there are many senior citizens who may not be working and can ill-afford the $60 needed to obtain the card.
What’s more, there may be many who do not make use of the bus or train every day of the week. It is therefore such a waste for a Senior Citizen to pay $60 a month for such a card – assuming he can afford it — and not make full use of it.
In all, the system appears short-sighted, to say the least, and leaves the Senior Citizen short-changed.
Why can’t the government, with all the surpluses (of taxpayers’ money) it has been accumulating every year provide a card for Senior Citizens that removes all encumbrances and allows free travel, renewable every two years?
I am sure that will not pose a problem to a cash-rich government like ours. Only then will it show that the government truly appreciate the sacrifices made by the Pioneer Generation, and the like, during the tumultuous years of the Fifties and Sixties. Only then will it move a few notches closer to the high standards (for Senior Citizens) set by our northern neighbours, who are not even a First World Country like us.
MALU