By Jovee Marie De la Cruz & Samuel P. Medenilla| Reporters
& Alladin S. Diega | Contributor
GRAY hair made Pelagia Declaro stand out in a crowd of young people at a jobs and business fair organized by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the local government of Pasay City at the Cuneta Astrodome.
This is the first time for the 61-year-old former hairstylist to enter a job fair, which offered 15,000 job vacancies, to finally consider a career change.
Despite being a senior citizen—defined by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) as those aged 60 years old and over—Declaro said she still does home service to her clients in Pasay City doing manicures or haircuts.
But due to her advanced age and hours spent taking care of her grandchildren, Declaro said she no longer earns as much as she used to.
She told the BusinessMirror she currently earns about P350 to P400 a day “unlike when I was younger, when I was able to earn P700 to P800.”
Declaro left her application papers at a booth managed by McDonald’s, one of a hundred participating firms at the job fair. She said she heard about the offer after hearing from fellow senior citizens that the Philippine business of the American fast-food chain is now accepting people her age as part of its crew.
“They told me they will call me to conduct an interview to know if I could do the job they will offer me,” Declaro said.
“They said it may involve clearing or cleaning tables. I could do that,” she added.
Small business
IT was a different case for Aurelia Inamon, 63, who traveled from her home in Cavite to the job and business fair to apply for a livelihood grant to expand her home-based peanut butter business.
Inamon said she decided to start her peanut butter-making business after closing a small-scale eatery business.
She told the BusinessMirror she needs additional capital to buy her own peanut grinder so she could expand production.
Currently, Inamon said she could only produce at least 30 bottles of peanut butter a day since she has to haul large amounts of peanuts to someone she knows who has a peanut grinder.
For someone who suffered two mild strokes, this tends to be a challenge especially since she usually processes 20 kilos of peanuts.
Inamon said she usually earns a net profit of P2,000 to P2,500 for a capital of P3,000.
Approach, aims
While their approach may be different, both Declaro’s and Inamon’s motivation for seeking continuous source of income despite their advance age remains the same: to help their families.
In Declaro’s case, it is to help her orphaned grandchildren in Bicol.
“I still want to help them and be able to give them [money]. While I could still move, I will still do so to help them,” she said.
For Inamon’s, it is to lessen the financial burden of her children who are now supporting her and her husband, who is now also retired.
“Each of my five children now has their own family. I would feel ashamed if I would ask help from them whenever we would get our water or electricity bills. That is why I would still like to earn,” she said.
Both Declaro and Inamon said they have no pension since they were unable to become members of the Social Security System (SSS) when they were still young.
Money flow
BUT even if both became SSS members, former Labor Undersecretary Rene E. Ofreneo said it is unlikely the pension will allow them to meet their individual needs much less the needs of their children and grandchildren.
“In the Philippines, SSS pension benefits are too low for seniors to survive. The monthly amount for seniors is obviously not enough; not even for the procurement of medicines,” Ofreneo told the BusinessMirror.
Currently, SSS monthly pensions start anywhere from P1,000 to P2,400. Depending on the monthly contributions one has made through decades of work to the system, that pension could rise to a range of from P4,000 to P11,000, or even in some rare cases as high as P18,000.
Ofreneo, also former dean of the University of the Philippines’s School of Labor and Industrial Relations (Solair), said that a large portion of the country’s senior citizens like Declaro and Inamon do not even receive such pensions since they are not members of SSS.
A 2017 study by the nonprofit group Coalition of Services of the Elderly (Cose) said that the biggest challenge of growing old in the Philippines is earning a living past the prime of age and onset of health issues. The report said this is particularly true for those who belong to low-income brackets and in abject poverty. Still, in their old age, senior citizens remain physically active in their communities and households that, unfortunately, are not monetized.
Universal pension
THE Cose report states that 58 percent of older people receive incomes from children within the country and 21 percent from their children who are outside the country.
The remaining do not receive any from their children, the main reason being their own poverty.
The study notes that 29 percent of senior citizens receive pensions from their previous work such as SSS, GSIS, and other schemes.
In 2017, the government allocated a budget to cover 34 percent of senior citizens with no pensions, about 2.8 million. Almost 40 percent of elderly remain with no pension of any kind.
The Cose also remarked that for those who receive pensions, allocations per person can be so low with 34 percent of SSS retirees receiving P2,000 a month or lower, and 52 percent are lower than P3,000. Since the data of the study was culled before 2016 or even earlier, these amounts have been adjusted—barely, with the increase in 2017 of P1,000. The additional P1,000 or second tranche is expected this year.
The group is advocating for a universal pension plan in the country to cover all senior citizens.
This need for additional income has prompted many senior citizens to return to the workforce.
Enabling law
LABOR Assistant Secretary Dominique R. Tutay said more senior citizens are now able to go back to work due to more senior citizen-friendly policies from the government and the private sector.
Tutay, the concurrent director of the Bureau of Local Employment (BLE), said new laws like Republic Act (RA) 10911, or the Anti-Age Discrimination in Employment Act, makes the workforce more open to senior citizens.
Signed in 2016, RA 10911 penalizes companies found using the age of a jobseeker as basis to reject an employment application.
However, crediting RA 10911 to the increasing participation of senior citizens in the workforce is frowned upon by other groups.
Employers’ Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) President Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr. noted that while many of their members comply with the provisions of the said law, especially when it comes to advertising for job placements, most eschew an older workforce.
Likewise, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said they have yet to encounter any job applicant who filed a complaint citing RA 10911.
“There is a need to remove biases, prejudices and ignorance on the part of enterprises in employment of retired and senior citizens,” TUCP Spokesman Alan A. Tanjusay said.
Lifting numbers
DESPITE the criticism on RA 10911, the DOLE was still able to record a consistent surge in the number of senior citizens going back to the labor market.
In 2013, only 1.5 million senior citizens were employed, but the following year after the passage of the RA 10911, the number of employed senior citizens reached 1.68 million. It rose again in 2018 at 1.8 million and to 1.88 million as of April 2019.
Tutay said working senior citizens are employed in administrative support or jobs requiring less physical activities.
She said they could usually be found working in the hotel and tourism industry as well as in fast-food businesses such as in the case of Declaro.
Tanjusay expressed concern over such trend, saying these firms may be merely using senior citizen employees as a marketing gimmick.
“There seems to be a concentration of opportunities for retired and senior citizens employed in restaurants rather than in another industry,” Tanjusay said. “It appears [to me] they are being used merely for good company image purposes and not based on their skills.”
Benefits, standards
WORKING senior citizens, however, face a new set of challenges upon their return to the workforce, including their deteriorating health as well as their exemption from social security benefits.
With this in mind, the DOLE imposed policies that reduced hours of work for senior citizens.
Labor Undersecretary Santos M. Benavidez said, for instance, a four-hour work should be exercised for senior citizens working in the fast-food industry so it will not be detrimental to their health.
“The normal hours of employees [should not be] more than eight hours. Hence, work hours of four hours or two hours is okay,” Benavidez said.
However, he noted that the pay for senior citizens should be based on their actual work hours.
Benavidez also stressed that senior citizens must be entitled to other general labor standards such as overtime pay and holiday pay as well as occupational safety and health standards.
As for being a cutoff from some social security benefits, BLE Director Tutay said a possible solution will be changing the mandatory retirement age from 65 to 70 years old.
However, she noted such regulation must be industry-specific rather than as a blanket policy.
“There are peculiarities in some of the occupations where stamina and strength is needed. That is why they want to lower the age retirement. But if you look at other literature especially outside of the Philippines, they would want the retirement age to be extended up to, let us say, 70 years old,” Tutay said.
Federation of Free Workers (FFW) Vice President Julius H. Cainglet objects to the notion of delaying the retirement age.
Cainglet noted that the additional pension to be received by the senior citizens while they are working will greatly help augment their income, especially amid the prevailing low minimum wage in the country.
“Their pensions should not be touched since they already worked hard for it,” Cainglet said.
Measure for teachers
THE House has already passed a bill for government workers who want to avail themselves of early retirement.
Last year, the House approved on third and final reading House Bill 5509 lowering the optional retirement age of government employees from 60 to 56 years old.
The bill seeks to amend Section 13-A of RA 8291, otherwise known as the “Government Service Insurance Act of 1997” wherein benefits are only given to those who retired at 60 years old.
Under the measure, government workers who have reached the age of 56 years may file for retirement and be entitled to old-age pension for life from the GSIS.
For her part, ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France L. Castro, principal author of the bill, said earlier retirement is one of the demands of public school teachers.
Castro said teachers in the Philippines retire five years later than those in most countries, noting that retirement age is 60 in most North American, European and Asian countries.
“Respect and humane consideration demand that a person of 55 years—a few years shy of being a senior citizen—should not be required to perform the arduous functions expected of a public-school teacher in the Philippines,” he said.
“At such stage of their lives, public school teachers should at least be given the choice if they wish to rest from the profession and enjoy better and healthy years ahead,” Castro said.
Opportunities, benefits
STILL, Tutay noted the advantage in hiring senior citizens is the wisdom they are able to impart to the company that would hire them.
She said the increasing number of working senior citizens will also be ultimately beneficial to the local economy since it will increase the number of income-earning members of society.
“First, their pay will go to consumption, increasing production,” Tutay said. “Second, in terms of social security, they will no longer be much of a burden since they are working. This will help augment what they are getting from their pension, which is usually not much, after they retire.”
Partido Manggagawa (PM) Chairman Renato B. Magtubo also agreed with Tutay, saying hiring senior citizens will allow companies to tap their experience.
“Allowing more senior citizens opportunities for employment will definitely help increase the demand of goods and services in the economy,” Magtubo said. “It will also provide continuing transfer of knowledge, skills and talents to the new entrants of the labor force derived from the long years of experience in jobs or function by senior citizens.”
Valued values
THERE are pending bills in the House of Representatives providing for employment opportunities to senior citizens.
House Committee on Economic Affairs member and Ang Probinsyano Party-list Rep. Ronnie L. Ong said, “There is no other timely act of love that reaffirms the Filipino tradition of caring for the elderly, addresses the inadequate special programs for senior citizens, prevents their mental health and physical deterioration, taps their wealth of life and work experiences, fosters their capacity to attain a more meaningful and productive aging, motivates and maximizes their contributions to nation building and augments their pensions and retirement savings, if they have any, than giving the elderly the access to employment opportunities.
“This is what our [House Bill 5362] is aiming for. Currently, while we have the ESCA of 2010 and the Anti-Age Discrimination in Employment Act, we see that the government, despite having various unfilled positions, has only taken the passive role of providing information and matching services for senior citizens in private employment,” Ong said.
“While private entities are entitled to tax deduction of 15 percent of the total amount paid as salaries, we observe that this barely encourages companies to actually hire senior citizens for 15 years now, since 2004,” he added.
HB 5362 seeks to institutionalize special work-for-pay programs for senior citizens.
Under the bill or the Senior Citizens Employment Opportunity Act, Ong said the private sector is 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 National Internal Revenue Code.
Ong said his proposal seeks to ensure the automatic employment allocation for Filipinos aged 60 years old and above.
Employment program
HB 5362 seeks to amend Section 5 of RA 9994 to ensure that senior citizens whose annual income is below the poverty threshold as determined by the Philippine Statistic Authority (PSA) are given priority employment through job matches provided by the DOLE and the National Commission on 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.
Ong hopes to change this by forging a partnership with the DOLE and tap its Tulong Panghanapbuhay para sa Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (Tupad) program to provide employment for senior citizens in various government offices, including public schools and state universities.
Earlier, Ong said his party-list has signed partnerships with the DOLE, UP, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Manila International Airport Authority, Philippine Children’s Medical Hospital and some provincial government units for the pilot implementation of the special employment program for senior citizens.
Ong said that senior citizens who will be hired to work will do tasks that are important but not physically strenuous—requiring at least three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. Employment will be given priority to senior citizens who live around the various pilot areas 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. In the National Capital Region (NCR), for example, they would get P537 per day.
Extenuating circumstance
RESTITUTO De Dios Jr., one of the senior citizens who was assigned at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport under the special employment program of Ong’s party-list, appealed to the national government to provide jobs physically and mentally fit senior citizens.
“At the age of 66, I don’t take maintenance medicine and, hence, I can still work even alongside workers who just recently graduated from college,” De Dios said in Tagalog.
He added he knows many senior citizens like him who want to work and can be up to task but are not given opportunities. Notably, De Dios was recently recognized for returning a bag he found inside the airport containing P20,800 worth of money and pieces of jewelry.
He said it is useless for the government to give them discounts on food, entertainment and medicine if they don’t have money to spend for these. “Kahit bigyan kami ng government ng mga discount sa pagkain at gamot, kung wala ka rin pambili, ano’ng silbi?”
After he retired from his company, De Dios said he tried to put up a small business to support his family. He borrowed P20,000 as capital for a pushcart, pots and pans, plates and utensils.
These were, however, confiscated during a road clearing operation. He hasn’t been able to recoup his losses.
After that, De Dios said he applied for a job at the Public Employment Service Office at their city hall. He was given a recommendation but the company he submitted it to told him there wasn’t a vacant position for him.
Building a system
TO address situations like what De Dios experienced, San Jose del Monte Bulacan Rep. Florida P. Robes is pushing for the passage of HB 2387 or “An Act Instituting an Elderly Employment System in the Philippines.”
Robes stressed that without a special employment program designed for the elderly, the ESCA and RA 10911—which prohibit age discrimination against any individual in employment—can be rendered futile.
“Hence, my proposal is to mandate both public and private institutions to design, formulate or institutionalize an employment program where our senior citizens can be tapped,” she added.
“To genuinely achieve development, we should adopt a holistic approach where no one is left behind by tapping into that ‘wealth of experience,’” she said.
According to Robes, elderly employees are more emotionally matured, more independent, competent, skilled and dedicated.
Under the bill, all government agencies and private corporations shall be mandated to institute an employment program ensuring the employment of senior citizens who have the qualification, capacity and interest to be employed.
Employment opportunities for the elderly shall include but not limited to clerical or secretarial works, consultancy, cleaning or janitorial services, event organizing, teaching, kitchen help, sale assistance, call-center jobs and such other jobs or volunteer works that may not be detrimental to their physical well-being.
The measure said a task force that will look into the employability of senior citizens shall be created under the DOLE and CSC to redesign jobs and human resource systems suitable to them.
Maximize efforts
MEANWHILE, Rep. Precious Hipolito-Castelo of Quezon City also proposed the creation of a Senior Citizens Technology and Livelihood Center (SCTLC) in every barangay in the country to motivate and encourage the elderly to take part in the development of society.
Hipolito-Castelo raised the proposal through HB 1347, which aims to maximize the efforts and contributions of senior citizens to nation-building.
“To honor the hard work of the senior citizens during their more productive years, we should uphold this opportunity for them to make the most of their role in national development. One of the ways would be to establish a technology and livelihood center where they can learn new skills that would open the doors of opportunity for their gainful employment,” Hipolito-Castelo said. “It is the very intent of this bill to in fact and in effect widen their base of participation as senior citizens in the nation’s economic development.”
The bill seeks to mandate the Department of Social Welfare and Development, in coordination with the local government units, to set up a SCTLC in every barangay nationwide; establish technology and livelihood programs; and, provide guidelines and working mechanisms fitted to the elderly.
In order to carry out the provisions of the Act, the necessary funds shall be included in the annual General Appropriations Act of the year following its enactment into law.
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