A PARTY-LIST group on Wednesday dared President Duterte’s economic managers who are blocking the P2,000 Social Security System (SSS) pension increase to live on a daily budget of P40.
This figure, the group said, is the daily equivalent of the P1,200 monthly base pension of the majority of the country’s SSS pensioners.
“Ang dali para sa kanilang harangin ang pension hike dahil hindi naman sila ’yung nakakaranas na di makakain ng tama o mabili ang mga gamot para humaba pa ang buhay ng ating mga pensioners. Ilang milyong pensyonado po ang matutulungan ng pagtataas ng pensyon, pero mukhang mas mahalaga pa sa kanila ang sinasabing credit ratings kesa sa buhay ng mga senior citizens natin,” Party-list Rep. Isagani Zarate of Bayan Muna said.
Zarate and Bayan Muna Chairman Neri Colmenares issued the challenge as Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno and National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Director General Ernesto M. Pernia blocked the congressional measure to give immediate relief to millions of SSS pensioners.
Elaborating on the challenge, Zarate said, “The P2,000 SSS pension only translates to P66 per day for the much-needed additional fund for our senior citizens’ food, maintenance medicine and other expenses, but this would be a big help for them to somehow have more comfortable lives.”
“In fact, with the initial P1,000 increase beginning this month, that would mean just P33 per day of additional funds for the elderly pensioners,” added Zarate, one of the principal authors of House Joint Resolution 10 granting the increase beginning this month.
Zarate said the proposed P2,000 SSS pension hike would only raise to P106 per day the base pensioners’ budget, a far way off from the P183 per person daily budget or P1,096 daily living income for a family of six members, according to a study by the independent think-tank Ibon Foundation.
Colmenares, on the other hand, questioned the figures and data put out by the administration’s economic managers to justify their position against an SSS pension increase.
“SSS announced during the deliberation of our bill during the last Congress that a P2,000 increase will deplete SSS funds by 2029. The current proposal is only a P1,000 increase in 2017 and the other P1,000 increase sometime in 2020 and, yet, the economic managers threatened that this will deplete the fund life further to 2027,” Colmenares said.
“How come a P1,000 increase will result in a shorter fund life than a P2,000 increase. This is absurd,” he added.
Colmenares also questioned the unfunded liability data of the economic managers.
“In June 2015, former SSS Chairman Emilio de Quiros declared that the unfunded liability of the SSS is P1.2 trillion, but SSS will mop it up to P908 billion. Now, a little more than a year later, the economic managers declared a current P3.5- trillion unfunded liability. Either the SSS suffered massive losses last year or someone is playing with the data,” he added.