Pension increase for seniors pressed

Senator Juan Edgardo Angara has asked his colleagues in Congress to pass a bill that will double the social pension of all senior citizens from the current P500 to P1,000.

“We must ensure that every Filipino senior citizen receives this well-deserved benefit that will help them meet their daily needs,’’ said Angara, whose father, the late former Sen. Edgardo angara was considered the father of the Senior Citizens Law.

“Moreover, since the health expens- es of seniors are generally more costly, we aim to double the amount of social pension from R500 to R1,000 a month, the lawmaker from Aurora said, as the country celebrates Grandparents’ Day today.

He cited data from the Coalition of Services of the Elderly (COSE) showing that only 33 percent or 2.9 million of the estimated 8.7 million senior citizens are covered by contributory pension such as the Social Security System (SSS) and the Government Social Insurance System (GSIS).

Of the 5.8 million senior citizens with no contributory pension, only 3.4 million are currently covered by the Social Pension Program for Indigent Senior Citizens of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

To be eligible for the DSWD’s social pension program, the senior citizen must be frail, sickly or with disability; do not receive pension from state-run pension agencies and do not have a permanent source of income or financial support from family or relatives.

This leaves 2.4 million elders with no pension at all.

Angara’s Senate Bill 1865 removes the “frail, sickly or with disability” requirement.