The bill that Makati City Rep. Luis Campos Jr. recently submitted to the House of Representatives, increasing to P2,000 the P500 monthly social pension of indigent senior citizens who are 70 years old and above, is simply too ambitious and farfetched.
Still, it is bringing hope to the intended beneficiaries and their families. After all, they could dream about it and make it one of their many wishes for this Christmas season. Besides, six years has passed since President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo approved the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010 that set its amount at P500.
That P500 has never been increased despite the mandate of Congress to review it every two years in consultation with the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
It is so small that it is now being disbursed as a quarterly stipend of P1,500 through door-to-door delivery, presumably at a cost that is high relative to the small value that is being delivered.
Anyone who is 60 years old or older and “frail, sickly or with disability, and without pension or permanent source of income, compensation or financial assistance from his/her relatives to support his/her basic needs” is qualified to receive this dole from DSWD.
This definition disqualified all SSS pensioners but nobody has questioned its inconsistency with the Social Security Act, which provides under Section 29 that “the establishment of the SSS shall not disqualify the members and employers from receiving such government assistance, financial or otherwise, as may be provided.”
Worse, DSWD—conveniently citing lack of funds—granted social pensions only to those who were 77 years old and older and it was only in 2015 when it lowered the qualifying age to 65 years old. Did DSWD ever possess the legislative power to amend ESCA?
But as what ESCA mandated, President Digong’s new DSWD Secretary Judy Taguiwalo will grant the social pensions to those 60 years old and above starting January 2017.
The number of social pension beneficiaries would then double to 2.4 million, and even exceed all SSS pensioners. Consequently, even at the same amount of P500, DSWD has to double to P17.94 billion its 2017 social pension budget.
What about Rep. Campos’s proposal? If it were to be applied to all indigent senior citizens, then it could quadruple this budget to P71.76 billion.
The amount exceeds, obviously, the required P56 billion funding for a similar P2,000 increase in the pensions of SSS, which former Rep. Neri Colmenares made so hot an issue in 2015 until the presidential elections of 2016.
The Colmenares bill was passed almost unanimously by both houses of Congress, but President Benigno Aquino III vetoed it for fear of its financial consequences. On the other hand, then Mayor Digong and the other populist presidential aspirants—except PNoy’s anointed candidate—favored its approval.
Six months after President Digong’s ascent to the presidency, it is still in limbo. This time, its main oppositors are his newly-appointed SSS officials who do not agree to its immediate and full implementation.
Like their predecessors, they are convinced that its outright grant would bankrupt SSS by 2029. On the other hand, they have not even consulted their member employers and employees if they’d agree to raise their contributions.
Why don’t SSS officials explain that this is the universal funding method in increasing pensions? Fifty-nine years after its establishment, the SSS program has reached a state of equilibrium in its revenues and expenditures, and any increase in benefits would require a corresponding increase in contributions.
Instead, they talk about new investment strategies as if these would enable SSS to raise enough funds for the P2,000 pension increase. Of course, this only distracts everybody from seeking the right solution.
In fact, the Social Security Act has existing provisions that point where to get the financing of pension benefits. Sadly, they remain good on paper only and had never been resorted to.
Section 20, for instance, provides that –
“As the contribution of the Government to the operation of the SSS, Congress shall annually appropriate out of any funds in the National Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the necessary sum or sums to meet the estimated expenses of the SSS for each ensuing year.”
Whether SSS is in financial trouble or not, Government is thus supposed to appropriate funds for it.
Moreover, if SSS were made to give the P2,000 pension increase, then it could call on Government for additional funding under the same section –
“In addition to this contribution, Congress shall appropriate from time to time such sum or sums as may be needed to assure the maintenance of an adequate working balance of the funds of the SSS as disclosed by suitable periodic actuarial studies to be made of the operations of the SSS.”
Indeed, we have enough laws to enable an increase in pensions.
But if we still insist in passing more—such as the Campos bill —but without the strong political will to implement them, then these new laws could only end up as mere promises that would create more false pension hopes.