by Lito Dar

BAGUIO CITY, Tuesday  March 15 – The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD-CAR) held Monday the regional orientation on the government’s Social Pension Program for Indigent Senior Citizens at the Hotel Supreme, here.

In attendance were about 200 local chief executives (LCEs), provincial and municipal Social Welfare and Development officers, and Office of Senior Citizen’s Affairs (OSCA) officers from the different provinces, city, and municipalities in Cordillera.

According to DSWD-CAR regional director Porfiria Bernardez, the Social Pension Program primarily aims to improve the living condition of the country’s indigent senior citizens, to augment their capacity to meet their daily subsistence and medical requirements, to reduce incidence of hunger among such age brackets, and to protect them from neglect, abuse, and deprivation.

The P500 monthly stipend aims to augment the daily subsistence and other medical needs of indigent senior citizens in line with P-Noy’s social contract with the Filipino people and in support of the Expanded Senior Citizen’s Act of 2010 (Republic Act 9994).

For now, priority beneficiaries for the said program are those 77 years old and above, as the government is still looking for additional funds to eventually include all indigent senior citizens in the country.

In the region, Bernardez said Social Pension Program is set to benefit 3,566 indigent senior citizens – 77 years old and above, who are pre-identified through the DSWD’s National Household Targetting System (NHTS).

There will be 1,129 beneficiaries from Abra, 417 in Apayao, 623 from Benguet, 78 from Baguio City, 372 from Ifugao, 548 in Kalinga, and 399 in Mountain Province.

Bernardez affirmed that it is their goal to start paying the beneficiaries within this quarter and in which they will designate special disbursing officers for the releasing of the P500 monthly stipend (from January 2011) of the beneficiaries until their cash cards (ATM cards) are processed.

According to Bernardez, the program has an initial funding of P870 million, which is set to benefit more than 146,000 eligible indigent senior citizens nationwide. The program is set for review by Congress every other year to see on how to better improve it. *(PIA CAR)