Senior citizens wait for their turn to claim the fifth tranche of the city’s assistance. CDN PHOTOS/JUNJIE MENDOZA
Although most elderly persons of Cebu City received the P2,000 cash, the fifth tranche of the city’s cash assistance for the senior citizens, with smiles and gratitude, some of them are calling for an increase in the amount.
Sister Adelina Cabahug, a 90-year-old nun of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, said that the P2,000 would not be enough for her medicines.
“Not even enough for my medicine. I spend around P5,000 a month,” said Cabahug, who claimed her cash assistance in Barangay Guadalupe yesterday.
However, she was still grateful for the city’s assistance for senior citizens, which is P12,000 a year given in tranches of a thousand to two thousand for each release.
With this fifth tranche, the senior citizens this year had received P7,000 of the P12,000 cash assistance.
Domingo Chavez, Cebu City Office of the Senior Citizens’ Affair (OSCA) head, said that they could not increase the amount because the City Council had already fixed an appropriation for this purpose.
For this year, the budget for the senior citizens cash assistance is P807 million.
This will be distributed to the current 67,300 senior citizen-beneficiaries of the city.
Chavez further said that some newly-registered seniors under this program are still in the waiting list because of the lack of funds.
He said that for these seniors they would have to wait for someone to be removed from the program by either death or inactivity to start enjoying their benefits.
Barangay Guadalupe, which had 4,586 beneficiaries, set up 46 tables to serve these number of senior citizens claiming their cash assistance at the barangay’s sports complex.
The Guadalupe beneficiaries also received rosary beads and images of the Blessed Mother Mary, which were brought by one of the beneficiaries, who claimed her P2,000 assistance in the morning.
Tania Sanchez, a General Services employee serving as a distribution officer said the senior citizen brought a plastic bag full of the items, which they shared with the other claimants.
Barangay Councilman Apol Rose Enriquez said that they only experienced minor glitches like typographical errors of the names of the beneficiaries and mismatching of their OSCA ID control numbers.
Enriquez said that cash assistance of senior citizens, who had been identified as being bedridden since 2016, would be delivered to their homes three working days after the distribution./USJ-R Intern Rosalie O. Abatayo