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MANILA, Philippines – Team PNoy senatorial candidate Juan Edgardo “Sonny’ Angara is urging the Department of Education (DepEd) to come up with a program that will provide continuing education for senior citizens.
This way, Angara said, senior citizens would not become easy targets for fraud and financial scams.
He noted that some senior citizens have become the targets of criminals because they have huge fortunes and substantial savings account.
Older people from poor communities, he said, are also more vulnerable to text, lottery and pyramiding scams because of their trusting nature and their desire to earn money.
Angara said the DepEd should then develop training modules and supervise the implementation of continuing training for the aging sector “to encourage their participation in the community, prevent them from falling prey to scammers, and improve quality of life.”
“We can take steps to help prevent them from being fleeced or swindled. We have to provide a wide variety of educational options for the elderly people,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.
Angara pointed out that under Republic Act 9994 or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010, which he authored, the DepEd, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) and the Commission on Higher Education (Ched), in consultation with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and people’s organizations (POs) for senior citizens, “shall institute programs that will ensure access to formal and non-formal education.”
Participants, he said, can choose between seminar or workshop activities on various topics such as art, history, computing and memory, or even educational activities such as courses on computer usage and talks that can contribute to the knowledge of specific aging-related topics.
“Retired but still abled personnel and senior volunteers could be recruited to help promote these programs to inspire their peers to interact more with society,” Angara added.