Monday, April 28, 2008 Echaves: Attention: Osca By Lelani P. Echaves Thinking Aloud
FINALLY! After waiting for over a week, I got my Senior Citizens Card.
Naturally, I looked forward to using this card and enjoy what Republic Act (RA) 9257 promises me. Imagine—20 percent discount on purchases of unbranded generic medicine, hotels, restaurants, recreation centers, theaters, cinema houses and concert halls, medical and dental services, diagnostic and laboratory fees in private facilities, and domestic air, sea travel and public land transportation.
I don’t always remember to show my card before paying. When you’ve been younger than 60 for 59 years, 11 months and 30 days, it takes a while to kick into place the habit of remembering you’re now more golden than gold, and to fish out first your Senior Citizens Card (SCC) than your gold credit card.
Still, I’m learning to think of things in discounts. I now have this magic card that knocks off 20 percent of most things I’ll need sometime. So I thought.
Some establishments don’t share my enthusiasm, however. At Rose Pharmacy in Ayala Center Cebu, I ordered my monthly supply of vitamins and gleefully presented my SCC. The sales girl snapped, “Asa ang imong purchase booklet?”
I asked what that was. Walking away, she said, no purchase booklet, no discount.
Prescription for the vitamins? My parents raised me on vitamins even while in my mother’s womb. Did the same thing for my two children. No doctor ever wrote me a prescription for vitamins. Now, as a senior citizen, I was to have such prescription? I was taking vitamins so I would remain healthy enough not to need maintenance medicines, but I needed a prescription for vitamins?
I was irritated by this time, of course. Why didn’t the Office of the Senior Citizens Affairs (Osca) just include the accompanying purchase booklet, when they issued my card?
I was into my series of annual medical exams this year. Since my policy with Caritas Health Shield allows me free medical exams, I went to this accredited diagnostic center on the basement of Ayala Center Cebu last Thursday. The tests for bad and good cholesterol were not in the package, so I’d have to pay for this add-on. That’s okay, I’d get a 20 percent discount, right? Then, I presented my SCC.
“It’s only 10 percent discount,” the receptionist said. “How come? The law says 20 percent,” I said. The usual spiel played, “That’s the instruction, Ma’am.”
Racing to work from this diagnostic center, I passed by Jollibee Drive-Thru near the Sykes call center building to order breakfast for me and the whole family.
The cashier gave me 20 percent discount on my total order. That would’ve made my day, but they added the E-Vat, thus decreasing the discount.
The same happened yesterday at the Chowking outlet fronting Redemptorist Church. While these practices circumvent RA 9257, they’re less greedy than the dimsum and Japanese food outlets in Ayala Center Cebu. They deducted 20 percent only from the food I was taking, not my companion’s. Right, they also added the E-Vat.
