Villar: Senior citizens law needs amendments

"The senior citizen law is defective and has many flaws," Nacionalista Party President Sen. Manny Villar said yesterday. "It needs urgent review and revision," he added.

Villar filed Senate Resolution 952 directing the committee on social justice, welfare and rural development and other appropriate committees to conduct an inquiry and summon concerned senior citizens groups.

Villar is also asking the concerned Senate committees to conduct an immediate inquiry on the implementing rules and regulations of the law, which could not truly address the needs of the senior citizens.

Since the passage of the law, Villar said, numerous senior citizens in the country, even in remote provinces, report ill-treatments committed against them by abusive businessmen and establishments.

The existing law gives special privileges such as discounts on medical purchases and other types of establishments. It grants a 20% senior citizens discount on medicine purchases for example.

The Coalition of Association of Senior Citizen of the Philippines complained that the 20 percent senior citizen discount on purchases of medicine is rendered nearly inutile by the 12 percent value added tax or VAT.

Villar was informed that several drugstores have also enforced a new policy requiring senior citizens to secure a doctor's prescription even for over-the-counter drugs in order to avail of the 20 percent privilege.

"This new policy of the drugstores is not only absurd but also impractical," he said, adding that the senior citizens would have to spend for doctor's fee plus transportation cost to get prescription not to mention the inconvenience it would entail.

During his recent visit in Bacolod , Villar was also informed that several restaurants in the city are only extending 6.67 percent discount to the card bearing senior citizens.

Villar added that senior citizens are puzzled were these erring establishments was able compute this meager discount to them..

Further, the existing law limits the grant of privileges to senior citizens whose income does not exceed to P60, 000 per annum. Concerned senior citizens have claimed that that requirement is obsolete and impractical due to its low level and the impracticality of verifying income changes.