The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said that the delayed distribution of the social pension of more than 55,000 indigent senior citizens as mentioned in the 2014 audit report of the Commission on Audit (COA) is now being completed with only 2,642 seniors remain unpaid.

This came after Joey Salgado, head of the media affairs of Vice-President Jejomar Binay commented that the DSWD failed to deliver the benefits of indigent senior citizens, further aggravating their deplorable condition.

“The issue raised in the COA audit report has already been resolved, with DSWD giving its management response. DSWD has already resumed the distribution of the pensions and hopes to finish this by November,” DSWD Assistant Secretary Javier R. Jimenez, the Department Spokesperson said.

Asec. Jimenez said that the DSWD wanted to make sure that the beneficiaries of the program are indeed indigent, and that they are included in the database of poor families under the National Household Targetting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) in compliance to the provision of the General Appropriations Act of 2014. The DSWD withheld the distribution pending the result of the validation which was only completed in May this year.

The 2013 GAA did not require such validation of beneficiaries in the NHTS-PR database.

He also added that another reason for the delay is the unliquidated cash advances of the Senior Citizens Funds by some local government units.

While the distribution of the delayed pensions is ongoing, DSWD also continues to distribute the 2015 grants to beneficiaries.

To date, a total of 740,431 social pensioners out of the 939,609 target beneficiaries have received their monthly pension of P500 each. The payout is done every first month of the quarter.

Asec. Jimenez said that for this year, indigent seniors who are 65 years old and above are included as beneficiaries. In the previous years, only those who were 77 years old and above were considered.

The Department considers the following indigent senior citizens as its priority for inclusion in the program: frail, sickly, or with disability; without pension from Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), Social Security System (SSS), Armed Forces & Police Mutual Benefit Association, Inc. (AFPMBAI), and other insurance companies; and, without any permanent source of income or regular support from his/her relatives.  ###