Poor seniors to get P1,000 monthly pension starting January — DSWD

Indigent Filipino senior citizens are entitled to receive P1,000 in monthly pension starting this January, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said Thursday.

"Good news po, mula P500 po nitong nakaraang mga taon, nadoble na po iyan, magiging P1,000 per month," DSWD Undersecretary Edu Punay said.

(Good news for senior citizens. The P500-pension that they have been receiving these past years has been doubled to P1,000.)

More than 4 million senior citizens are set to benefit from the P50-billion pension program, a report on 24 Oras said.

However, distributing the pension as scheduled every month remains a problem, the 24 Oras report said, because administration of the program has yet to be transferred to the National Commission on Senior Citizens (NCSC).

Instead of monthly releases, the accumulated pension amount has been made available to some seniors once every two months, or at times every six months.

"May directive ang batas na nagsabing within the three years, ita-transfer yan sa NCSC at gusto kong sabihin na kami sa NCSC ready na po kami," said NCSC Chairperson Franklin Quijano.

(The law has a directive that the program would be transferred to the NCSC within three years. I would like to say that we at the NCSC are ready.)

Quijano added, "Whatever is administratively viable na ginagawa ng DSWD, ginagawa nila. On our end, nag-aaral kami kasi gusto namin kung maaari nga lang, dahil sa batas, sabi monthly dapat ibigay mo monthly,” Quijano said.

(The DSWD is doing whatever is administratively viable. On our end, we are studying the administrative side, because we would like to release the pension monthly, as provided by law.)

The NCSC is continuously updating its database to ensure the distribution of the pension to eligible senior citizens. It is also inspecting establishments to ensure that appropriate discounts are given to seniors. — Sundy Locus/ VDV, GMA Integrated News