NEXT year, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) hopes to come up with more measures aimed at improving the living conditions of the nation ’s elderly.
This it will do by increasing the number of indigent senior citizen pensioners from the current 3.5 million to 3,789,874, according to DSWD spokesperson Director Irene Dumlao.
Republic Act No. 9994 or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010 provides that senior citizens qualified to receive social pension are those who are frail, sickly, or with a disability.
A beneficiary must not be receiving any pension from other state agencies and without a permanent source of income or source of financial assistance to support his/her basic needs.
Under RA No. 9994, the government, through DSWD, grants an indigent senior citizen a monthly stipend of P500 to help augment his/her daily subsistence andother medical needs.
And an elderly who is not included in the list of indigent senior citizen pensioners may appeal to the Office of the Senior Citizens Affairs (OSCA) or the local government unit (LGU).
DSWD and other concerned state offices and agencies provide for the self-reliance, care and rehabilitation of the country’s growing army of the elderly, notably the poor.
And we are made to believe that the crusading administration of President Duterte is committed to foster the senior citizens’ capacity for a more meaningful and productive aging.
Doubtless, the increase in the number of indigent senior citizen pensioners reflects the government’s genuine concern over the welfare of the nation’s special social sectors.
Of course, the people, notably the poorest of the poor, expect the government, through the DSWD, now headed by Secretary Rolando Baustista, to deliver on its pro-elderly agenda.
