Labour Shortage Retirement Homes

Money doesn’t guarantee longevity, living longer. Rich people don’t say much. They are kinda shy. All they do is silently make money by any means necessary. Therefore, we will never know if they want to live beyond 80, when most of body parts have declared CLOSED FOR THE DAY, or not.

But billionaires and approaching billionaires do get sick, sometimes to the point that servants/slaves cannot take care of them at home. That is the only way to describe them servants/slaves.

It still boggles the mind how you justify paying someone who watches your kids, cleans your home, cooks for you, washes your drawers, cleans the bathroom and cleans your aging behind, slave wages.

When the rich, reach the stage where family does not want to take care of them anymore, they go to institutions. Certain countries are associated with wealth. They are also facing nursing shortages, a polite way of saying their citizens do not want to join nursing, which is a dirty profession. So, they recruit from other countries.

By nursing, we don’t mean registered nurses, who go to nursing schools and write exams before they can be certified as such. For this piece, we mean jobs lower than that. Jobs that require wiping and cleaning clinics, hospitals and ageing citizens.

Why do women from Philippines, Mexico, Africa or Ireland take these jobs in Canada, Middle East, U.K. or U.S.? Foreign exchange. Money in former Commonwealth countries has less value than the pound, dollar or euro, even though they have gold and platinum.

For example, one Canadian dollar gives you approximately R11 South African rand. Another example is Trinidad and Tobago. The base pay for a nurse in the U.S. is $37.61 an hour. That is roughly 253.98 Trinidad and Tobago dollars.

Ironic isn’t it? Former colonizers stole wealth from Africa and the Caribbean, but their own poor citizens do not want to help them to the bathroom when they are old and rich.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.