Delisted senior citizens assured of cash gift

KEEP calm. Everything will be fine.

A City Hall official yesterday assured elderly residents of the city who found their names missing from the list of beneficiaries of the city government’s cash assistance program for senior citizens that the error can easily be rectified.

“There is no malicious intention here,” said Rolando Llagono, head of City Hall’s Office of Senior Citizens Affairs (OSCA) as he explained that the snafu happened when the computer they were using in purging the master list crashed.

He said they can be listed again provided they approach their respective chapter presidents and present a photocopy of their senior citizen’s Identification Card.

OSCA has so far listed 57, 000 senior citizens who are qualified to receive the second tranche of financial assistance. Each beneficiary stand to receive P4,000 when the OSCA releases the cash aid on Dec. 8. The first tranche of P3, 000 each was given in June.

According to the OSCA, about 4,000 to 5,000 senior citizen beneficiaries were found to have problems in their computer entries.

Some beneficiaries have the same identification card number, but they come from different barangays. Leonia Castro Arias of barangay Punta Princesa and Leonila Lerasan Arias of barangay Capitol Site share the same identification numbers.

There were also cases of beneficiaries who have two identification numbers and were listed as residents of two different barangays.

Llagono said they intend to complete the cleansing of their records next week so that they can already proceed with the processing of the payroll.

The City Council on Wednesday passed a resolution authored by Councilor Rodrigo Abellanosa asking for the appearance of OSCA officials in their Nov. 28 session to answer questions surrounding the delisting of some senior citizens from the OSCA list.