A Bill for the setting up of an Older Persons Authority received cross-party support in parliament on Wednesday.

The bill was moved earlier this week by Jo Etienne Abela, Minister for Active Ageing following the end of a consultation period that was launched in March.

It provides for the establishment of an Older Persons Standards Authority whose main role will be to establish and enforce standards for residential and other services offered to the elderly by the government and private entities. The authority will establish the criteria for the granting, refusal, suspension and revocation of licences. It may grant, refuse or suspend licences and investigate complaints against service providers.

It shall also be the role of the Authority to recommend measures to improve the quality of services for older persons and establish and update a public register of licensed agencies or services. A tribunal will hear appeals from decisions of the Authority.

The Authority will be run by a seven-member Board of Governors, appointed by the government.

Nationalist MP Albert Buttiġieġ welcomed the setting up of the authority, given that Malta has an ageing population. He said, however, that the authority should not be answerable to the minister, so as to avoid political interference. Instead, it should be accountable to the Commissioner for the Elderly within the Office of the Ombudsman.

The authority, he said, should also have an advocacy role and be able to speak out on the standard of living of the elderly.

Deteriorating living standards

Buttiġieġ said being elderly was never easy and many elderly people now were suffering from deteriorating living standards and could not make ends meet. They felt that society and the government were abandoning them while others did what they wanted. The benefit abuse scandal was a case in point. Studies by Caritas, the GWU and Graffitti, among others, all showed how hard it had become for the elderly to keep up with the cost of living, with a substantial proportion falling below the income threshold.

Buttiġieġ called for improved tax relief on pensions and better facilities for the elderly to continue to live in their communities. He also suggested that local councils should have social or community workers who visited the elderly, to fend off loneliness. There was also a need for more night shelters. Unused former convents could possibly be used for this purpose.

Randolph de Battista (PL) said it was this government which was repeatedly raising pensions, and they were not taxed. He said this bill was important in view of the growing population of elderly people. Lessons should be learnt from Japan, where many lived long because they continued to work or remained active for longer, and they followed healthy lifestyles and diets. Their life was based on self-help as far as possible, mutual aid involving several groups of volunteers, social security and government assistance.

He said that in Malta, while more attention needed to be given to digitalisation, life should not be made complicated for the elderly. The banks, for example, needed to ensure that the elderly continued to have access to services, and digitisation did not end up being a form of discrimination against them.

Secondly, he said, the elderly should be invited to continue to participate in decision making and their views should be valued.

Unfair restrictions by insurers

He complained that it was becoming increasingly common for insurers to impose restrictions on elderly travellers and motorists, even though that age cohort was not responsible for a higher proportion of traffic accidents. This was unfair and undermined these people’s rights.

De Battista said he also looked forward to the government’s launching of a long-term strategy on dementia and said services in this sector needed to be improved. There should also be greater support and advice to relatives of dementia patients.   

Other speakers in the debate included Claudette Buttiġieġ (PN) who underscored the need for more medical specialists to treat the elderly for conditions such as diabetes, and Malcolm Paul Agius Galea (PL) who called for uniformity of standards in care homes and discipline in the enforcement of those standards. 

Other speakers on Wednesday were Nationalist MPs Graziella Galea and Graziella Attard Previ. 

The debate was concluded by minister Abela who said the board of the authority, as in the case of other institutions, would be appointed by the minister and act autonomously, although the minister would retain overall responsibility for the sector. It was obvious, he said, that no minister would knowingly appoint incompetent governors because no minister wanted a sector under his remit to fail.  

The authority he said, would not act as if it was the police, but it would help service providers achieve and maintain standards. The wellbeing of residents in old people's homes would be the over-arching principle. 

Abela said that while the bill made no mention of a register of those who harmed the elderly, the government would shortly move a bill for the setting up of a register of people who harmed people with disabilities or the elderly. 

He said the number of medical specialists was increasing, including those who saw diabetes patients. 

Abela said in reply to comments made on Tuesday, that he understood complaints about communication problems between carers and patients. The authorities, he said, were working to ensure that foreign care workers could at least speak good English. He added that Malta was in competition with other countries to attract such workers, and he was grateful for their service.  

The bill was then unanimously given a second reading.