VALIDATION. Office of the Senior Citizens Affairs Tacloban head Rodrigo Cinco issues identification cards and booklets to senior citizens. The OSCA will revalidate qualification of elderlies who are beneficiaries of the government’s social pension program. (Photo courtesy of OSCA Tacloban)
TACLOBAN CITY -- The Office of Senior Citizens’ Affairs (OSCA) here will revalidate the qualification of elderlies who are beneficiaries of the government’s social pension program.
This after the office received complaints on the selection process of qualified senior citizens for the PHP500 monthly subsidy provided under the Republic Act (RA) 9994, or the “Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010”.
OSCA Tacloban head Francisco Cinco said indigent senior citizens should be 60-year-old Filipino citizens who are sickly, frail, disable, without regular compensation, pension, and regular support from relatives.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has initially conducted the revalidation, as the implementing office. However, Cinco said it has to be done the right way.
“Due to irregularities in the processing, the DSWD secretary himself ordered to cleanse the list of beneficiaries that is why, there were delays in the release of the social pension in 2019,” he said in an interview with Philippine News Agency on Monday.
The city government has yet to come up with a specific number of recipients of social pension programs in the city.
Cinco said they were supposed to be personally visited in their houses during the validation process, but some were only gathered in village halls and questions were asked without looking into their actual situations.
With last year’s approval of the Republic Act (RA) 11350 or the National Commission of Senior Citizens Act, the OSCA can now take charge in the revalidation process of social pension beneficiaries with the new commission being the lead agency in the implementation of programs for senior citizens.
However, Cinco said there were setbacks in the implementation of RA 11350 due to the delayed proclamation of the Senior Citizens Party List representative Francisco Datol Jr., who automatically sits as the chairperson of the commission.
“The reassessment is not going to be an easy job. We will start at the bottom. Identify the problem, what caused the problem, and find solutions. Those who will not follow the guidelines should be properly sanctioned,” he added.
Cinco said the implementing rules and regulations of the new law will be available soon. It will affect an estimated 30,000 senior citizens in the city’s 138 villages. (PNA)
