Bohol first district Cong. Rene Relampagos delivered his first privilege speech before the members of the House of Representatives in session last Monday. Addressing his colleagues in the Lower House of Congress, Relampagos called for action to protect the rights of the country's senior citizens. “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family…and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness…old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control,” Relampagos reminded the House, quoting Article 25, No. 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “We are less than a month away towards Human Rights Day, (and) I would like to bring to your attention an example of how a government agency has, for so long, been violating the human rights of our senior citizens, although perhaps unconsciously,” he said.

The First District solon identified the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) as the offending agency and recounted a letter from a constituent where the writer identified herself as a 78-year-old former superintendent of schools. Quoting extracts of the letter, Relampagos stressed the hardship that GSIS pensioners experience because of changing policies and modes of payment of the monthly pensions of the GSIS and the lack of sympathy for their enfeebled condition. “The sender of this letter, is a former superintendent of schools. Imagine how more difficult it is for those who retired as ordinary government officials. To whom would they reach out to and how?” he asked his colleagues in Congress. Relampagos also cited a letter in the September 4, 2010 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, where a certain Lourdes Morato of Cavite, wrote that it had been two and a half years since she filed a request for re-computation of retirement benefits, updating of her service record, and a refund of excess loan payments with, as yet, no action on her request. Now 67 years old, Morato retired from government service in January 2008.

“This has been a persistent and widespread problem involving thousands of our government retirees from Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao. They, who gave the best years of their lives in the service of our people, and who are now in the twilight of their lives, are experiencing tremendous sufferings to obtain financial benefits that they do not only deserve, but which are due them,” Relampagos pled. “This is cruel, insensitive, inhuman, unjustified, and inexcusable...The standard reply or excuse of the GSIS is that they are in the process of a systems upgrade and a database overhaul. This has been the excuse for more than a year. This puts to task the management of the GSIS why the systems upgrade and data overhaul has taken so long at the expense of the elderly retirees, some of whom come from afar and are even terminally ill,” the First District solon continued. Relampagos highlighted that as a signatory to the Madrid International Plan of Action for Older Persons and the Macau Plan of Action for Older Persons 1998 and Shanghai Implementation Strategy 2002, the Philippines should be in the forefront of protecting the rights of senior citizens. However, figures from the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) state that of the seven million Filipinos who are over 60 years old, three million live in poverty and 900,000 are “desperately poor.” GSIS pensioners being among them.

He also cited an Inquirer report on how the Philippines is the only country in Asia that has no social pension for poor, older people, those not formally employed when they were younger and thus did not have social security or insurance that they could draw from in their older years. He noted that even countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Vietnam all have a form of social pension for the elderly poor. Relampagos went on to challenge that if these countries were able to provide for people who had no pension benefits, the Philippines should be able to do more for its GSIS retirees. Although a first-termer congressman, Relampagos heads the House Committee on Human Rights.