Claudia Mahler, a UN independent expert on the environment of all human rights by elderly people, expressed concerns on Thursday over the human rights situation of the workers in the ship-breaking yards in Bangladesh.
She urged the authorities to ensure rights for the elderly workers in the shipbreaking yards, saying that the workers whom she met during her visit presented a harrowing tale about their working conditions.
"They are working amid a huge health hazard, and they do not have any job guarantee," she mentioned, quoting the workers.
"We spoke with older people who work in the industry, and they told us, in difficult to be honest, heartbreaking circumstances, that they are facing the work without any protection."
"Out there, they get many specific diseases like cancer because they don't have any specific health care, which should be provided by the companies, and there is no insurance," she added.
"As far as I understood, most of them don't have real contracts. So if they are not able to work, then they are not getting paid at the end of the day, and they're the main breadwinners for their families. So there is no social protection."
"Then there were real health care issues, and they were facing very harsh conditions. I also learned that many of them migrated to the area to work in this kind of industry, but we're not fully aware of how this situation really is," the UN expert said, adding that a lot of things need to be done to improve the situation.
"It needs to be addressed from a social security aspect and from a health care aspect, that the working conditions are much safer, because it has a huge impact on their health situation in later life."
She also felt that the old age allowance needs to be raised, as the present amount is not sufficient at all to cover the expenses, especially for healthcare.
"On the one hand, there are specific areas in the countries that are sometimes overlooked when determining eligibility for the old age allowance. This is what I learned, and there are also specific issues with people with specific backgrounds, which can also not get people's attention," she said.
She also mentioned that older people are no longer seen as valuable members of the workforce, which is a major issue.
She suggests proper budgeting and infrastructure as well as assessing what is needed to ensure the rights of the elderly in society.
So, in my opinion, active ageing begins very early because we are not only targeting the elderly; we must consider this as part of the lifecycle.So we need to start early when it comes to health services. So all the preventive mechanisms might be a very good idea to include them at a very early stage.
"We also need to take into account that the human rights framework is also lacking in the area of age discrimination." This is why I have been arguing for many years that a new convention on the rights of the elderly is also required."
