NSW:Elderly at risk from cuts to specs program

AAP General News (Australia)
02-02-2012
NSW:Elderly at risk from cuts to specs program

By Lauren Farrow and Adam Bennett

SYDNEY, Feb 2 AAP - The suspension of a NSW program to provide glasses to the elderly
and vision impaired will risk the health and safety of the disadvantaged, a pensioners'
group says.

The Department of Family and Community Services has announced that VisionCare NSW will
suspend its program from February 29 until July 1, saying it needs to be reined in after
again running over budget.

The VisionCare program has since 1992 supplied eligible elderly and disadvantaged people
with free spectacles and other visual aids.

Its temporary suspension is likely to affect about 25,000 people.

The decision has provoked an angry response from the Combined Pensioners & Superannuants
Association of NSW (CPSA), which says it will disadvantage some of the state's most vulnerable
people.

"The VisionCare NSW program helps the truly destitute and it is outrageous that Minister
for Family and Community Services Pru Goward should suspend it," CPSA senior policy officer
Antoine Mangion said in a statement.

"This action puts at risk the health and wellbeing of thousands of disadvantaged NSW residents.

"Many recipients of the program's spectacles are elderly and now face deteriorating
vision and falls because they will be unable to afford the cost of a pair of glasses."

A spokesman for Ms Goward told AAP the program needed to be reviewed because it had
exceeded its $4.4 million budget.

"The program needs to be looked at because it has been running over budget for the
last four years," the spokesman said.

NSW Opposition leader John Robertson said the VisionCare decision was "miserable".

"This is a government that is demonstrating it has no heart," he said.

AAP ab/jjs/tab/wjf

KEYWORD: GLASSES WRAP

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