Hold on! Don’t we senior citizens deserve better?

In our fast-expanding, profit-mad society, senior citizens, pensioners and general wage-earners are facing an increasingly unsympathetic and unco-operative corporate world. Electricity rates have gone up, and so have telephone rates.

Making a telephone call to a bank, an airline office, a hotel or a beauty or hair salon, can be a very frustrating experience. We are kept waiting by receptionists who say "hold the line".

As we wait, we are forced to listen to rock music or advertisements for hotels or restaurants that most of us cannot afford to visit. Often we have to repeat or rephrase our queries to get a proper answer from these young (perhaps not that young) people staffing corporate offices. Often, several voices come on line, and each time we are told to "hold the line”.

Meanwhile, our biological clock and the telephone meter are clicking. We end up paying exorbitant bills, even though the SLT claims it has reduced tariffs. The telephone is a necessity, not a luxury. It is a need, not a want. With the situation the world is in, we should be able to check on our loved ones whenever there is an emergency anywhere. Telephone personnel and other employees should expedite a phone request as quickly as possible, or, if they expect to take time, offer to call back. Here too people do not have the courtesy to return a call.

I am writing on behalf of the country’s senior citizens and middle class and lower-middle class people. At this point in time, we are all finding it difficult to live a simple life, with our basic needs taken care of.

By S. De Mel, Colombo