President Duterte has been urged to step in on the supposed slow disbursement of financial assistance to senior citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senior Citizen partylist Rep. Rodolfo “Ompong” Ordanes brought to the attention of the Chief Executive the “continuous troubles” hounding the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s implementation and disbursement of the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) , Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT), and Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens.

“To date, we continually receive reports from thousands of our senior citizens all around the Philippines on how the DSWD fails to timely disburse the monetary aid that our government promised to them,” he said in his letter to Duterte dated Oct. 21.

He laments that some of the senior citizens have perished before receiving a single centavo from the monetary aid due them.

“This slow implementation and disbursement of the DSWD of critical monetary aid for our senior citizens clearly runs contrary to the directive of Your Excellency for the government to do whatever it takes to protect the welfare of our almost 10 million vulnerable senior citizens,” he said.

“Thus, we humbly seek the assistance of Your Excellency in requesting that the DSWD fast-track the implementation and disbursement of the monetary aid for our senior citizens,” Ordanes said.

During the House of Representatives’ plenary deliberations on the proposed P171-billion budget of the DSWD for 2021 last Oct. 13, it was relayed that some 1.404 million senior citizens have benefited from the national government’s SAP.

In a virtual press briefing last week, over 2.9 million indigent senior citizens have received their social pension worth about P8.7 billion. The number is almost 83 percent of the 3.5 million indigent elderly targeted to receive the government stipend.

During his 58th birth anniversary last Oct. 15, DSWD Secretary Rolando Bautista led the distribution of social pension worth P2.178 million to around 726 indigent senior citizens in Dinalupihan, Bataan.

Republic Act No. 9994 or the “Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010” provides that seniors qualified to receive social pension are those who are frail, sickly, or with disability; without any pension from other government agencies; and without a permanent source of income or source of financial assistance and compensation to support their basic needs.

However, the DSWD said those senior citizens who are not included in the list, but are eligible, can still appeal to the Office of the Senior Citizens Affairs (OSCA), their local governments, and the nearest Field Office, which has jurisdiction over their areas, for assessment.