The Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office 5 has convened the Municipal/City Social Welfare Officers in the provinces of Camarines Sur and Masbate yesterday at Kanzo Hall, Legazpi City.

Social Pension Focal Person, Lloyd Lara said that the department updates the Local Government Unit (LGU) for the new guidelines particularly the general provision on the General Appropriations Act for 2014.

The latter states that the appropriated amount for social pension should be used exclusively to pay the monthly stipend of Php 500.00 to indigent senior citizens registered in the Listahanan’s database.

Meanwhile, Ciriaco B. Abejuro Jr, Regional Focal Person of Listahanan announced that a special validation for indigent senior citizen will be conducted in April 2014.

“The purpose of special validation is to determine the poverty status of the social pension recipients who are not registered in the database”, he said.

“Relative to this, a total of 62 staff will be deployed region wide comprised of 44 Enumerators, 9 Area Supervisors and Encoders.”he added.

Social Pension is one of the social protection programs of the national government as provided under Republic Act No. 9994 otherwise known as the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010.

As of now, Region 5 has 24, 762 social pension beneficiaries in its 4^th year of implementation. ###