Senior citizens may soon no longer need to go out of their own abodes and bear long queues to be able to get their social pension from the government.

This as the Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office VI will be piloting in June the door-to-door delivery of pension to indigent senior citizens using the services of the Philippine Postal Corporation (Philpost).

Judith Marte, DSWD VI Social Pension program’s focal person said they have already conducted several dialogs with PhilPost Corporation to discuss the memorandum of understanding, clarify some terms, issues and problems, and agree on various plans and directions along implementation of the scheme.

Through the implementation of the door-to-door delivery of social pension, the DSWD hopes that the implementation of the program will be improved and will become more efficient.

Social pension is the monthly stipend amounting to P500 given to indigent senior citizens aged 77 and above to augment their daily subsistence and other medical needs. Specifically, it aims to improve the living condition of the poor elderly people through augmentation of their capacity to meet their daily subsistence and medical requirements, by reducing incidence of hunger and by protecting them from neglect, abuse or deprivation.

INCREASING COVERAGE

As of first quarter of 2013, Marte said Western Visayas has a total of 18,505 social pensioners who came from 133 local government units in the region. The Department has allocated Php27,757,500.00 for the first three months of the year for the qualified beneficiaries who received stipend at Php1,500 each.

The Social Pension covered 12,981 beneficiaries in 2011 when its implementation was started in Region VI. Modes of payment then were cash advance and transfer of funds.

In earlier part of 2012, the program covered 15, 743 beneficiaries that later increased to 18,505 with the additional 2,762 new enrollees in November. The same year, all of the 133 LGUs fully implemented transfer of funds. Total funds released in 2012 amounted to Php102,744,000.000.

This year, Marte said they are expecting that the number of beneficiaries will increase to 19,904 with the additional 1,399 new social pensioners. The vouchers for the processing of payment of the new beneficiaries are already underway and they may receive their grant this second quarter./DSWD6/Wenna A. Berondo