A party-list lawmaker on Wednesday again appealed to President Rodrigo Duterte to order the Department of Social Welfare and Development to expedite the release of the July to December 2020 social pension for indigent seniors.
At P500 per month, the total social pension for the six months is P3,000 per pensioner.
Rep. Rodolfo Ordanes of the Senior Citizen party-list group wrote the President on Dec. 7, 2020, noting “how the indigent seniors need their social pension for survival needs.”
Ordanes said the release of the DSWD pension had been mired in technical difficulties among the DSWD, depositary bank, and electronic payments services providers.
He said a further complication was the lack of e-payments access for seniors in remote and isolated areas, for which door-to-door or face-to-face delivery modes were necessary but with COVID-19 precautions.
“We are days away from Christmas and the end of this calamity-ridden year. Indigent seniors desperately need their social pension of P3,000 for the second half of 2020,” Ordanes said.
“I am puzzled as to why the release of the social pension is taking so long. I appeal to the DSWD, the banks and the e-payments firms to please not worsen the suffering of the seniors.”