Why social pension of elderly was delayed

By: Jennifer P. Rendon

In September 2019, the community of “elders” was abuzz with expectations for their much-awaited social pension grant.

But come the day of the release, mixed emotions engulfed senior citizens after learning that a good number of them were not on the list of those entitled for the P500 monthly stipend.

Invectives were hurled. Blames were thrown.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), local politicians, and village leaders were demonized after a good number of the 60 years old and above Filipinos did not get their P6,000 yearly stipend.

But Judith Tanate-Barredo, DSWD-6 Social Welfare Officer III and social person on Senior Citizen, said no person was to blame for the problem.

Barredo attributed the delay on the conduct of validation and the process of transition – from transfer of fund to direct payout.

For Western Visayas, the target beneficiaries are 365,908. But not all were downloaded because of the list cleansing.

“The revalidation of social pensioners was completed by DSWD-6 on June 2019,” she said.

In an advisory, DSWD-6 said notes that during the revalidation, the information provided by the beneficiaries or their authorized representatives were encoded and transmitted to DSWS Central Office in Quezon City to categorize those eligible and non-eligible for the program using a computerized system.

The list of qualified social pensioners is downloaded in batches to the field office. This is the reason why some municipalities and cities received the social pension ahead of the others.

As such, the downloading of the list of qualified social pensioners will not happen at the same time.

“Thus, we would like to set it clear that not being included in the list already provided to us does not automatically mean that the elderly is not qualified. DSWD-6 is currently waiting for more names of elderly who are qualified for the program,” Barredo said.

But as of December 2, she said the agency has received 354,218 of downloaded beneficiaries.

“Out of that, we have already paid 246,421 representing 70 percent of the beneficiaries,” she said

The delay in the approval of General Appropriations Act (GAA) also led to the late release of the pensions.

Meanwhile, Barredo appealed to beneficiaries whose names are not included in the list during the payout to wait a bit more.

“It doesn’t mean that you have been delisted. The fund is there,” she said.

For the remaining 30 percent, Barredo said they will exhaust means to release their social pension before the year ends.

But owing partly to the lack of special disbursing officers (SDOs), Barredo said they mighty complete the payouts early next year.

Relatedly, Barredo also clarified that not all senior citizens are eligible to receive the social pension provided under Republic Act 9994 or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010.

She said there’s a criteria provided for the Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens (SPISC) program.

These include seniors who are frail, sickly or with disability; those without any pension from other government agencies; those without a permanent source of income or source of financial assistance/compensation to support their basic needs; and those with no regular support from family or relatives for his/her basic needs.

Barredo said the agency will not deviate from its objective in improving the social condition of senior citizens.