The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) clarified that indigent older persons under the Social Pension Program receive P500 monthly  pension and not P6,000 as being circulated over social media.

The Social Pension Program is an assistance to indigent older persons in accordance to the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010 or Republic Act 9994.  Under the law, an elderly, 60 years old and above, is qualified to receive the P500 monthly pension if he or she is: frail, sickly or with disability; without any pension from other government agencies; and without a permanent source of income or source of financial assistance to support his or her basic daily subsistence expenses and basic medical needs.

The Department provides the cash subsidy to the social pensioners on a quarterly basis or 1,500 per quarter, totaling to P6,000 for one year.

DSWD Secretary Virginia N. Orogo appealed to the public not to share wrong information to avoid creating unnecessary confusion among the public.

She added that DSWD is open to answer queries if there is any information which concerned bodies need to know about the different programs and services of the Department.

“Using inaccurate data is not helpful to the public.  Much as we appreciate efforts to help DSWD in information dissemination, it would be best that fact-checking to be done first with reliable sources before sharing,” she said.

To date, 2,906,079 indigent older persons have received their pension as of the second quarter of this year.  ###