Over 40% of CdeO voters are seniors

MindanaoToday.com | Over 40% of CdeO voters are seniors

By: Uriel Quilinguing

CAGAYAN DE ORO – More than 170 thousand residents here are holders of identification cards as senior citizens, availing of 20-percent discount every time they buy medicines and food and on land, air and sea transport fares if they travel.

Registered with the Office of Senior Citizens Affairs (OSCA), they roughly represent 43 percent of the city’s electorates of over 380 thousand last year and most, if not all, would be queueing to the polls for the May 2025 midterm elections.

Nurse Coleen Ancajas-Chavez of the City Social Welfare Department, in a “Department in Focus” online on Thursday, October 10, said their list contains over 170,000 names of residents who are at least 60 years old, but not all are social pensioners.

The granting of monthly social pension of P500 to indigent senior citizens started in 2010 when the Senior Citizens Act was enacted as Republic Act No. 9994.

Section 3 of R.A. 9994, however, defines “indigent senior citizens as elderly who are frail, sickly or with disability, and without pension or source of income, compensation, or financial assistance from their relatives to support their basic needs.”

Hence, only 14,028 senior citizens who are residing in Cagayan de Oro were deemed eligible for social pension, Ancajas-Chavez said, a figure that was confirmed on Friday, October 11, by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Regional Office 10 here.

Retirees’ monthly pensions come from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO), and the Social Security System (SSS). These include those who are below 60 years old because those who were in the military, police, and security agencies retire at age 56.

Ancajas-Chavez said a new law, amending R.A. No. 9994, has already been passed, increasing the monthly pension for indigent senior citizens from P500 to P1,000 (R.A. 11916). But this is still on hold, pending the issuance of guidelines.

This, retired police captain Douglas Dabatian said would definitely be of great help for all senior citizens who have no pension, although all of them have already been enjoying 20-percent discounts on medicines, food, and transportation all these years.

Now an octogenarian, Dabatian, who was designated OSCA head in December last year, said senior citizens are getting benefits from the city government, including the free pneumococcal vaccines that the City Health Office administered on October 10 and 11 this year. This, he said, would cost about P4,000 if availed outside.

The free access to movie houses every Monday in three malls in Cagayan de Oro, upon presentation of OSCA ID, is among the firsts in the country and has been fully enjoyed by their members. And the establishments of five district or satellite OSCA offices enable them to avail of services and assistance that they need.

Those who mark their golden wedding anniversaries are given cash-gifts by the city government, aside from doubling the centenarian cash award of the national government from P100,000 to P200,000. “I have personally witnessed the handing over of these cash gifts,” Dabatian said. (Uriel Quilinguing/MT)

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