MANILA, Philippines — A lawmaker is calling for the immediate release of the second tranche of the approved increase in social security pension for senior citizens.
Under House Resolution No. 1366, Senior Citizens Partylist Rep. Rodolfo Ordanes said the immediate implementation of the P1,000 second tranche increase of the social security pension will greatly ease the economic suffering of senior citizens especially following the recent calamities that hit the country as well as the ongoing pandemic.
“As of [this year], 2,150,000 SSS pensioners are at high risk and fail to properly cope with the consecutive tragedies befalling our country from a global pandemic, an economic recession, massive floods, and super typhoons due to the undue delay in the implementation of the second tranche increase of the social security pension,” Ordanes said in the resolution.
Ordanes also raised his call to President Rodrigo Duterte through a letter dated November 18.
In the letter, Ordanes said thousands of his constituents have reached out to him to expedite the approval of the implementation of the second tranche of the additional P1,000 pension which was supposed to be released in January 2019.
“At present, while we are thankful that Your Excellency has gone above and beyond your call of duty by providing various monetary aid such as the Social Amelioration Program, the Unconditional Cash Transfer, among others, for the benefit of our senior citizens, the successive ravage of the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic recession, massive flooding, and super typhoons have rendered our government’s current efforts to protect our senior citizens simply not enough,” Ordanes said.
In 2017, Duterte approved an initial P1,000 additional monthly pension benefit, with the second tranche of another P1,000 to be granted to pensioners beginning 2019.
But after the approval of higher pension benefits for retirees, the net income of SSS in 2017 slid 37 percent to P20.3 billion.
READ: SSS seeks to delay 2nd round of pension hike to 2020