Friday, June 20, 2008 Editorials: Giving senior citizens their due
A BILL filed in Congress by a Cebuano lawmaker urges Filipino citizens younger than 60 years old or those who operate or manage business establishments to be more benevolent enough to increase the benefits extended by law to senior citizens.
Senior citizens are presently enjoying 20 percent discount on medicines from urban restaurants, big pharmacies, and transport firms.
Being presumed to have devoted most of their younger days in effective service for the family and country, senior citizens are entitled to due respect and recognition and thus deserve public assistance.
The bill entitled “Act Strengthening the Benefits and Privileges of Senior Citizens,” seeks to do just that.
Discount
Authored by Cebu City-South Rep. Antonio Cuenco in the House and by Sen. Edgardo Angara in the Senate, the bill seeks an increase of 10 percent to the discount on purchases by senior citizens of food, medicines and transportation.
It seeks to amend and improve RA 9257 or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2003.
The Cuenco bill has already passed the House committee.
The bill also grants “a five percent discount on gasoline, kerosene and other petroleum products provided the purchase would not exceed P1,000 a month.”
Other benefits include “the exemption from individual income taxes, training fees for socio-economic programs, free medical and dental services, diagnostic and laboratory fees but not limited to x-rays, CT scan and blood tests in all government facilities, subject to DOH guidelines.”
Meeting of minds
The bill is decidedly well-meaning and truly beneficial to the senior citizens, especially at a time when the global economy is perceptively crawling on hands and knees.
But it is one thing to have such a law, and it is another to have it accepted by the business sector.
There has to be a meeting of mind and heart between the bills’ proponents and the ones from whom the benefits the seniors will enjoy would eventually emanate.
To have an unwilling or resisting grantor of the benefits could make senior citizens feel like beggars when they go to restaurants or hospitals, and recreation centers.
