Senior citizens of Cebu want the five presidential candidates to take a stand on the clamor for increase of Social Security Service (SSS) pension. Their answers will be the basis of the seniors in choosing their bet in the coming May elections. (CDN FILE PHOTO)
Senior citizens in Cebu City are asking this year’s presidentiables if they will push for the passage of the P2,000 across-the-board hike of the Social Security System (SSS) pension for the elderly.
Office of Senior Citizens Affairs (OSCA) head Domingo Chavez said the five candidates’ respective answers to this question should guide the senior citizens in the country in choosing who to vote for this coming May elections.
“I don’t know if they are interested in that topic but I guess they are because it’s election time and the seniors are a voting force. There are 1.3 million seniors who are pensioners. There’s a multiplying effect there because seniors have children and grandchildren,” Chavez told reporters yesterday.
The next leg of the presidential debate is scheduled to be held in Cebu on March 20.
He reiterated the dismay of senior citizens in the city when President Benigno Aquino III vetoed the bill seeking a P2,000 increase in pension last month.
Chavez said the increase would have greatly benefited the pensioners, including himself, especially in supporting their maintenance medicines and other needs.
“We’re hoping against hope that the next president will sign it if it will reach to him, if they pass it again as a bill,” he added.
As a pensioner, Chavez said he gets P3,000 to P4,000 a month which he uses to buy maintenance medicines for his diabetes, heart ailments, high blood pressure and multivitamins.
In his veto, Aquino said another increase in pension would eventually result to financial deficits on the part of SSS in the future.
But Chavez said what the SSS should work on is collection efficiency.
“I have read that the collection efficiency of SSS is only 38 percent; this means they lack 62 percent. If they double their collection to 70 percent, the shortfall of around P30 million will be gone,” he said.
Last January 28, the OSCA participated in a protest at the SSS office in Cebu.