Bayan Muna Partylist Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate and former Rep. Neri Colmenares, also from Bayan Muna Partylist (davaotoday.com file photo)
DAVAO CITY—Militant lawmakers slammed the economic managers of President Rodrigo Duterte over the Social Security System pension hike issue and dared them to live with P40 only, the present daily equivalent of the P1,200 monthly base pension of the country’s SSS pensioners.
Both Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate and Chairman Neri Colmenares posed this challenge to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Director-General Ernesto Pernia.
“It’s so easy for them to block the pension hike because they have not experienced to eat insufficiently or to buy medicines to prolong the lives of our pensioners. The increase of pension will help millions of pensioners but it seems though credit ratings are more important for them than the lives of our senior citizens,” Zarate said, accusing the three economic managers for blocking the P2,000 Social Security System (SSS) pension increase.
According to Zarate, 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.
“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,” he added.
A study conducted by the independent thin-tank IBON Foundation, 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.
Former Bayan Muna Representative Neri Colmenares also questioned the figures and data put out by the economic managers of the Duterte administration to justify their position against an SSS pension increase.
“SSS announced during the deliberation of our bill last Congress that a P 2,000 increase will deplete SSS funds by 2029. The current proposal is only P1,000 increase in 2017 and the other 1,000 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.”
Colmenares said that in June 2015 former SSS Chairman de Quiros declared that the unfunded liability of SSS is P1.2 trillion but SSS will mop it up to P908 Billion.
Now, a little more than a year later, Duterte’s economic managers declared a current P3.5 trillion unfunded liability. Either SSS suffered massive losses last year or someone is playing with the data.”
Colmenares criticized Diokno for “misleading the public in passing to Congress the blame for the pension hike now being held hostage by these economic managers.”
“Secretary Diokno should be reminded that the Social Security Act of 1997 clearly mandates that any rule or regulation promulgated by the SSS Commission related to benefits, like increase in pension as in this case, needs the approval of the President of the Philippines,” Colmenares said.
Meanwhile, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan warned Duterte of his economic managers branded by the group as “neoliberal triumvirate” that opposed Duterte’s pro-people policies.
“The so-called economic managers oppose the SSS pension hike. They previously opposed the two year ban on land conversion. They now want to raise the excise tax on oil products. It seems that they are systematically trying to undermine whatever pro-people and progressive policy pronouncement Duterte has in his government,” the group said in a statement.
Bayan added that Duterte should listen to the ordinary people and not the pro-business, pro-foreign, economic mangers. Protests loom over the government’s failure to uphold its promises to the people. (davaotoday.com)
