I AM writing this article without prejudice hoping that what happened to me and my wife, when we wanted to have our old and faded senior citizen identification card (ID) replaced at the Office for the Senior Citizen Affairs (OSCA) in Mandaue City will not happen to any other senior citizen requesting for the same.
We were hoping that it won’t take long for we thought it was just as simple as filling the blank of the new card with all the information that already existed, sticking the latest photo that we had with us, laminating it and paying for whatever fee was required.
It turned out, however, that we had to start all over again by filling out an application form. I mean what is the use of doing the whole process again when the old ID, with your permanent designated number and pertinent info thereat, describes who you are already?
Why can’t Mandaue OSCA make a similar bold move as when Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin forcefully instructed the top DFA officials to remove the birth certificate as a requirement for passport renewal?
As the old cliché goes, we are not getting any younger and filling out forms and going back and forth to fulfill the requirements needed can be pretty laborious already for some senior citizens, though still ambulating. Like being asked to have copies of your old ID only to find out that OSCA doesn’t have a copier of its own.
What made our experience even unpleasant is the indifference shown by personnel inside the office while waiting for proper instruction where to go. On top of that we were attended by a person who lacked the sense of hearing and the ability to speak.
Yes, we were impressed and thankful that Mandaue OSCA has hired persons with disability (PWD), but are they the right people to attend to senior citizens who themselves may have developed impairments of their own over the years?
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against PWDs, but I am questioning the propriety of having hearing impaired individuals attend to senior citizens, where you expect adequate interaction to happen to get things done as efficiently. Disappointed with what was happening, we left. Needless to say that we will just continue using again our old and faded senior citizen ID card.--JESUS SIEVERT