Some 100 senior citizens living near the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) were the latest batch to be enlisted in the work-for-pay program, a lawmaker said on Thursday.
Rep. Ronnie Ong of Ang Probinsyano Party-list said his group, Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III, Manila International Airport Authority (Miaa) General Manager Ed Monreal, Pasay City Mayor Emi Calixto-Rubiano and representatives of Parañaque City local government and senior citizens groups signed Tuesday a memorandum of agreement which would allow the employment of senior citizens at the Naia.
“We’ve been focusing so much on giving discounts and other perks but I believe that our senior citizens should continue to have economic opportunities not just to have extra money but to also feel that they are still contributing to our society,” Ong said.
The lawmaker said same work-for-pay program for senior citizens was implemented in Central Visayas last week. Ong initially launched the program at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines before the same program was initiated at the University of the Philippines-Diliman, the Philippine Children’s Medical Center, and the National Bureau of Investigation.
Ong has forged a partnership with Department of Labor and Employment to tap the Tulong Panghanapbuhay para sa Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (Tupad) program to provide employment for senior citizens not only to give them economic opportunities but also to make them feel important and still useful to the society despite their old age.
Ong said that senior citizens who will be hired to work will do tasks that are important but not physically strenuous. Employment will be given priority to senior citizens who live around the various program venues and their salaries will be drawn from DOLE’s Tupad allocation.
The salaries of the senior citizen workers under this program shall be based on the minimum salary in each region.
Ong is also pushing for the institutionalization of this special work-for-pay program by filing House Bill 5362 or the Senior Citizens Employment Opportunity Act to ensure the automatic employment allocation for Filipinos aged 60 years old and above.
Ong’s bill seeks to amend Section 5 of Republic Act 9994, or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010, to ensure that senior citizens whose annual income is below the poverty threshold as determined by the Philippine Statistics Authority are given priority employment through job matches provided by the DOLE and the National Commission of Senior Citizens (NCSC).
HB 5362 also compels all government offices to invite, select and hire qualified senior citizens for positions, qualifications and functions initially determined by DOLE, the NCSC and the Civil Service Commission.
The private sector is also encouraged to hire senior citizens and in return, they shall be entitled to an additional tax deduction from their gross income equivalent to 70 percent of the total amount paid as wages to senior citizens subject to compliance or the pertinent provisions of the Internal Revenue Code.