Senior citizens told: Cash aid payout may be delayed due to social pensioners’ list updates

Cebu City, Philippines — The Department of Social Welfare and Development in Central Visayas (DSWD-7) has announced that the distribution of cash aid for senior citizens under the social pension program might get delayed.

Leah Quintana, regional information officer of DSWD-7, said that the agency is currently conducting a validation on their list of social pensioners.

“So sa pagkakaron, gitan-aw gyud nato nga i-update ang listahan sa mga social pensioners kay basin ug dunay mga nangawala na, unya naa nay kadtong nagdawatan na og regular support. So gina-ensure nato nga dunay mahitabo nga validation,” Quintana said.

(For now, we are focusing on updating the list of the social pensioners because there might be some of the them on the list that could have been already gone and also there are those who had already started receiving their regular support. So we have ensure that there should a validation of the list.)

 She said that the validation has only started this month, where they might be able to release the cash aid in the month of June.

Read more: DSWD-7 disburses over P1.4B for unconditional cash transfer program

Aside from this, social pension payout will no longer be done quarterly, but instead, DSWD-7 will do the distribution on semestral basis starting this year.

“Ang pagpanghatag nato kay himoon na natong semestral kay wala naman tay fund transfer sa local government unit (LGUs),” she added.

Quintana added that LGUs will no longer participate in the social pension distribution and only DSWD personnel would be allowed to attend the activity.

Social pensions are given to senior citizens, who are not receiving any pensions in both private and public institution and are not receiving support from their relatives.

Every month, social pensioners will receive P500 or P6,000 per annum. 

Currently, Central Visayas has more than 200,000 social pensioners./dbs