The SSS pension increase floats in limbo

WHEN it was announced last June that legislative measures had been filed to give pensioners of the Social Security System (SSS) an increase of 2,000 in their monthly income support, it was met with frenzied jubilation.

To the two million beneficiaries, this was the manna from heaven they had been waiting for. Now their prayers were answered.

Legislative measures had already been filed in both Houses of Congress increasing 2,000 the monthly SSS pension. I looked at this as a timely gesture. With their scant monthly dole-out, they could barely keep their ends meet.

The increase would tide them over the apparently personal budget deficit spending the pensioners had been going through every day all these years.

The proposed 2,000 a month increase promised them loomed like a gentle rain after a long drought. The applause coming from the pensioners and their family members was deafening.

But today, three months after the June announcement, the euphoria of elderly pensioners of SSS seems to have died down.

The congressmen and senators who sponsored the legislative measure are keeping themselves scarce, avoiding media interviews.

The SSS retirees are asking: “Will the perceived monthly bounty go to nowhere? Will the thunderous acclaim by the beneficiaries dissipate?”

Already there are talks of the state fund not being able to sustain the 52 billion needed every year with the proposed increased monthly pensions of retirees.

So the reaction posed by the public is: Will the SSS management seek succor from the national government to help beef up the fund for the purpose cited above? Does it need another act of Congress to achieve that?

To the two million pensioners, the waiting is agonizing.

Health authorities fear that if the increase will come next year yet, many of these elderly recipients will no longer be around to enjoy the benefit.

It is noted that the increase as proposed needs an enabling law, not just a say-so by Malacañang or even a resolution by the commission’s board of trustees.

“We don’t care who will give the gosignal for our increase. We need it while we are still breathing,” the elderly are one in their plea.

There’s an old saying that goes this way: “A hungry man knows no law.” Today’s pensioners have barely enough to buy for their daily table fare, and the medicine to take care of their failing health.

Here are the realities of the real value of the present paltry SSS monthly pension received by some of the hundreds of thousands of retirees: The amount of, say, 3,000 a month started in year 2000 have already been devalued at least 30 percent because of inflation.

The above amount in that year was able to buy, for example, 15 antihypertension pills, 10 anti-cholesterol tablets, and 15 multi-vitamins capsules – all generic medicines. But today, 15 years after, that money is only good for one-half the quantity of those tablets.

Economists blame inflation for reducing the value of that monthly pension.

Now what is inflation? Many pensioners do not understand the full meaning of the word. In fact, they hate listening to the sound of that word.

Simply put, inflation occurs when the costs of products and services are increasing so high the fixed, low income of some consumers, in this case, the pensioner, cannot keep up with the corresponding increase of prices of basic household products and, specifically medicines and hospital services.

Unfortunately, the primary victims of inflation are the low-income pensioners.