Where is the budget for the P10,000 birthday gift for senior citizens?

WE are calling on the Senior Citizens party list representative in Congress to work harder to address various problems encountered by senior citizens in dealing with the government systems.

The much-ballyhooed P10,000 birthday gift to senior citizens declared by President Marcos under the Expanded Senior Citizens Act is not only turning out to be a big disappointment, but laughable and quite pathetic. A senior who gets to celebrate his or her 80th birthday and expects to receive the gift finds out from the Office for Senior Citizens Affairs in the city or locality that there is no budget yet from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and that one must line up and wait several months to get it.

It is so ridiculous that something like this minuscule amount, a gift declared by Mr. Marcos himself, lacks the funding from the DBM—a small slice of the huge National Expenditure Program of P6.3 trillion in 2025.

Also, there are some banking system requirements and regulations that require certain ways of writing checks acceptable to the SB clearing system, and expect depositors to access and know these regulations online, through the internet. Seniors have a way of writing checks all their life but some banks have no consideration given to their depositors by communicating properly and issuing circulars in writing or in leaflets to guide depositors ahead of time.

I argued with a bank branch that attempted to reject my check deposit, which was not written the way the new SB rules require. Yet, the branch has not printed leaflets for everyone to be informed ahead of time of these new rules.

Some government regulations and systems simply lack consideration for senior citizens, age 80 and above, who number one million as of last count.