The Department of Social Development invited the South African Responsible Gambling Foundation (SARGF) to address delegates at the summit for older persons. The presentation was made as part of the National Golden Games 2019 activities were held on Wednesday 23 October, at Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth.
The aim of summit was to address the challenges faced by older persons and to try and come up with solutions to mitigate these challenges.
When addressing all present Shannon Manuel, the senior treatment advisor at (SARGF) urged Gogos and Mkhulus to use their money wisely. Manuel went on to tell Gogos and Mkhulus that the social grants money is meant to assist them to improve their quality of life and is not meant for gambling.
According to SARGF older persons might be resorting to gambling because of lack of companionship and to fill a void of being lonely. In her address Manuel outlined signs and symptoms that older persons should guard against in identifying a person who is referred to as someone who has a gambling problem. Lying about gambling habits, gambling alone or gambling more often, going without basic needs in order to gamble and having financial problems caused by gambling were some of the symptoms mentioned.
"Senior citizens are the fastest growing population of gamblers and they are gambling away their income including their savings", said Manuel.
Intervention programmes provided by the gambling industry includes self-exclusion where a person can voluntarily exclude him/herself from areas of specific gambling sites or third party exclusion where friends and family members of the person can apply to the courts for an individual to be banned from a gambling venue.