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By Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter
SOME senators, primarily Sen. Edgardo Angara,
are working hard to redress the grievances of senior citizens.
The Constitution recognizes the need to care for
senior citizens who, after devoting the more productive years of
their lives to family and society, have become vulnerable to
diseases, poverty, neglect and criminal violence. Article 15 Section
4 of the Constitution states: “The family has the duty to care for
its elderly members but the State may also do so through just
programs of social security.”
Unfortunately, there is a dearth of laws to give
flesh to this directive.
Two most notable laws provide substantial
privileges to senior citizens. These are Republic Act 7432 or the
Senior Citizens Law of 1992, authored by Sen. Edgardo Angara and
Rep. Edgar Lara of Cagayan, and Republic Act 9257 or the Expanded
Senior Citizens Act of 2003 authored by Angara which amended his
earlier law.
Angara noted that for years, the senior citizens
served and made valuable contributions to the country either as
government workers or private-sector employees, overseas workers, or
agriculture and industry workers.
“It is our duty to repay their services by
making life easier and more comfortable for them,” he said.
He thus conceived of Republic Acts 7432 and 9257
to repay the six-million plus senior citizens and lighten their
burdens in the twilight of their years.
These two laws provide wide-ranging benefits to
senior citizens, including the grant of 20-percent discount when
purchasing goods and services, medical and dental services,
transport fare, funeral and burial services, among others. In
addition, they are to receive free medical and dental service,
diagnostic and laboratory fees in all government facilities, and
priority service in all commercial and government establishments.
Some progressive cities like Makati and Quezon
City have been giving privileges to senior citizens beyond those
enumerated in RA 7432 and RA 9257, like free movies and discounts
when they buy groceries.
Generally, however, the privileges ordered by
law are seldom honored or are given by commercial establishments
only partially. There is therefore a need for more and better
legislation for senior citizens.
Elderly get low priority
Care for the elderly seems to be not among the
priorities of most senators of the Fourteenth Congress. Of the 1,987
bills filed in the First Regular Session, only 14 were counted by
The Manila Times to pertain to “just programs of social
security” for the elderly. Worse, initial indications are that
most of these 14 bills on senior citizens would eventually end up in
the archives, the legislative graveyard.
Early last year, Angara was ecstatic when the
Supreme Court junked the petition of drug store owners to scrap the
20-percent discount given to senior citizens.
Then, he saw the need for an amendatory law
after receiving thousands of letters from senior citizens
complaining about the diminution of their 20-percent discount by the
12-percent value-added tax (VAT). He was one of the authors of the
Reformed VAT Law and he stressed that it was never the intention of
the law to diminish the discounts enjoyed by senior citizens.
“With the 12-percent VAT, the 20-percent
discount given to senior citizens is now down to only 8 percent,”
he moaned.
He has filed a bill exempting senior citizens
from the coverage of the expanded VAT to reinforce the original
intent of his law to give them a 20-percent discount. Senate
President Pro-Tempore Jinggoy Estrada has filed a similar bill,
Senate Bill No. 1, although he is limiting the exemption from VAT to
purchases of medicines.
Angara sees a compelling need to make the senior
citizens enjoy the full fruits of the Senior Citizens Law, but he is
not very optimistic about the chances of his amendatory bill
becoming a law. He pointed to the opposition of Finance Secretary
Margarito Teves. A Cabinet member is an alter ego of the President
and the opposition of Teves means that Angara’s bill would most
likely face a Malacañang veto.
Concern over revenue losses
Teves was deeply concerned over the revenue
losses that the government would incur should the six million senior
citizens be exempted from the 12-percent VAT. Teves has been aiming
for a balanced budget, and any reduction of the existing revenue
sources would make his target harder to achieve. The Bureau of
Internal Revenue has failed to meet its collection target for 2007
by P45 billion and the Bureau of Customs, by P12 billion.
“Teves is a heartless tax collector. Taxation
should be a tool for development, not merely for enhancing the
government coffers,” Angara said.
Angara ’s bill is not the only measure on
senior citizens that Teves has opposed. The Finance secretary also
opposed Sen. Loren Legarda’s Senate Bill No. 269 seeking to exempt
senior citizens from paying the final 20-percent withholding tax on
interest income from their bank deposits.
Legarda said that she filed her bill after
noting that RA 7432 and RA 9257 both exempted senior citizens from
paying individual income taxes, provided that their annual taxable
income does not exceed the poverty level as determined by the
National Economic and Development Authority for that year.
“This exemption does not include exemption
from payment of the withholding tax on interest income from bank
deposits. This failure deprives most of the senior citizens a
substantial portion of their income from the interest earnings on
their live savings and retirement benefits deposited in banks,”
she said.
Legarda said that the DOF should have done the
senior citizens a greater service by proposing safeguards against
their exploitation by the rich. At the same time, she rejected
claims that senior citizens are mainly retirees who go to the banks
merely to withdraw their pensions.
“To say that only a fraction of Filipino
senior citizens are capable of putting money in the bank is an
insult to our elders,” she said.
Legarda has also filed another bill for senior
citizens but this does not seek to amend RA 7432 or RA 9257. Her
Senate Bill 1394 seeks to provide representation for senior
citizens, just like the youths, in local legislative and special
bodies.
Senate President Manuel Villar, Senators Chiz
Escudero, Miriam Santiago and Bong Revilla have also filed bills to
aid senior citizens.
To be continued
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