Filipino senior citizens can now stretch their cash a tad further. A 250 peso meal, for example, at any restaurant would now cost them only P200.
The signing into law of the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010 (ESCA), or Republic Act No. 994 will benefit some five million elderly Filipinos in the form of discounts on certain goods and services.
The law will allow senior citizens to avail themselves of the full 20-percent discount they are supposed to enjoy.
The discount was reduced to 8 percent with the imposition of the 12-percent value-added tax on certain goods and services in 2005.
A group of senior citizens hailed the signing of ESCA.
“This is a victory of the senior citizens! We drafted this bill and lobbied for it over the past three years,” said Salvacion Basiano, a member of the Council of Elders of the Confederation of Older Persons’ Association of the Philippines.
“If not for the older people who have patiently pushed for this bill to become a law, we will not have a landmark legislation on social protection for the elderly,” The Coalition of the Services of the Elderly (Cose) said in a statement.
Jude Esguerra of the Institute for Popular Democracy, which is a member of KAMP, said the law was a victory for social protection in the Philippines.
Esguerra, nevertheless, said the campaign for social protection in the country “still has a long way to go.”
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