Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja has attributed the wrong age records on the national identity cards of some elderly people on some of them wanting to appear younger.
The premier’s remarks during plenary in Parliament yesterday, came after Bugahya County Member of Parliament Pius Wakabi asked the Government to consider lowering the age at which the elderly can access Social Assistance Grant for Empowerment (SAGE) funds.
The implementation of the senior citizens grant started in the financial year 2015/16 with the 100 oldest persons in each of the nine lower local governments.
In FY2018/19, the Programme moved to the 80+ cluster and all the older persons who were of age 80+ and were the National Identification and Registration Authority’s database captured by the programme were enrolled.
The beneficiaries are entitled to shillings 25,000 every month which is paid by the Government.
According to Wakabi, no one has turned 80 years of age in his Kabale sub-county.
Deputy Speaker of Parliament Thomas Tayebwa also asked the Government to assist the elderly whose national identity cards were recorded with wrong details.
Nabbanja in response asked the elderly who have not clocked 80 years of age to take advantage of the Parish Development Model (PDM) programme funds.
According to Nabbanja, some people have lower ages on their national identity cards because they did not want to appear old at the time.
