Rody urged to sign SSS pension hike into law

ANGELES CITY, Philippines – Party-list group Anakpawis has urged President Duterte to sign into law the proposal passed in both houses of Congress to increase the Social Security System (SSS) pension by P2,000.

“We are calling on President Duterte to be firm and decisive because each day that the increase is delayed is a day of unjust disservice to the more than two million senior pensioners and their family, ” said Anakpawis Rep. Ariel Casilao.

In a statement, the group criticized Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia for using the “very same twisted and brazenly anti-people justification that the previous administration had used” when he said a pension increase would inevitably need a corresponding increase in the contribution of SSS members.

“Pernia and his neoliberal cohorts in the Cabinet are aggressively muddling the issue to scare the public and push President Duterte to renege on his promise to the pensioners and practically veto the pension increase legislation in the same way that former president Benigno Aquino III unceremoniously did it last year,” the statement read.

Anakpawis noted that “Pernia’s argument that a pension increase is not financially feasible for the SSS and the government or that it is not the taxpayers’ duty to shoulder the needs of the pensioners is misleadingly false and speaks of how the state has long given the lowest priority to social service.”

“Government has always been wary of providing the people with much needed support but is ever ready to ensure the profit of foreign investors through various forms of incentives including providing sovereign guarantee to private multinational corporations under the public-private partnership scheme which is costing the country billions of public funds,” Casilao said.