Assignment: Ageing without a safety net in Malaysia

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Industrialisation, modern cityscapes and strong economic growth promote an image of a youthful, vigorous Malaysia. But the country is now ageing rapidly, and this sudden transformation seems to have caught many - including the government - by surprise: Despite their country’s development, millions have little or no retirement income and face destitution or dependence in their golden years. What little provision is available was compromised during the Covid pandemic when the government allowed workers to withdraw retirement funds just to survive lockdown. Those who did so can now have almost nothing left in their accounts. Without any universal pension, many older Malaysians rely on their families – but younger relatives are often struggling in a low wage economy and find it increasingly difficult to provide for anyone but themselves. As Claire Bolderson reports, Malaysians may have to change their attitudes to retirement and to saving if they are to avoid the spectre of serious poverty in old age.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the documentary from the BBC World Service with me Claire Bolderson on assignment in Malaysia.
0:07.0	The cemetery workers call us and inform us that there is old men left in the cemetery and he has been abandoned here for a week.
0:24.0	I think the family has not able to care for him.
0:28.0	I don't think they want to leave him to be alone here,
0:31.0	but they hope that someone else will come and pick him up and shelter him.
0:36.4	In the relative quiet of a cemetery surrounded by the glittering skyscrapers of Malaysia's
0:41.4	bustling capital at Kuala Lumpur, I'm hearing a story that underlines
0:46.0	the crisis now facing the country's elderly.
0:49.5	What did you do?
0:50.5	We clean him, I wash him and we send him to the hospital.
0:54.0	Do you know what happened to him after that?
0:56.0	He passed away.
0:58.0	He died.
1:00.0	Yeah, he died.
1:01.0	I'm with charity worker Kwan Chi Hung whose many activities include delivering
1:05.8	vegetables to the poor. We've driven here in one of his people's ambulances
1:10.3	which take the sick and elderly to medical appointments free of charge.
1:15.0	He's a big man, built like a rugby player,
1:18.0	but he's clearly moved by the fate of the people he comes across.
1:22.0	I'm very, very sad, angry, and I feel like crying.
1:30.0	These people, when they grow old, they just want to have three meals a day and a place to cover them when it's rain and shine.
1:38.0	Simple as that. Society has not prepared for this ageing population needs.
	...

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