Of the many solutions President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has offered to ease today’s burden of high prices on the poor, none targets elderly people. Neither are the elderly among the targets of the 12 “pro-poor” bills (now pending in the House of Representatives) that the National Economic and Development Authority and the House leadership agreed should be pushed quickly into law. (BusinessWorld, June 17, 2008) Nearly everyone else from schoolchildren to jeepney drivers is targeted, but the elderly are overlooked, though studies show they, of all sectors, will make the best use of the help they get. Whatever help the elderly receive in the form of a social pension (such as those that exist in every other Asian country), or cash and food subsidies will be used to send their grandchildren to school, to feed them and keep them healthy. Almost nothing will be spent on themselves.

All of us have met such old people. In the Project 4 area of Quezon City, there was a man at least 80 years of age who went around every morning to collect food scraps for his pigs. He was always cheerful and nearly every house had something for him. He pulled a cart with a large can on it into which he put the swill. It grew heavier and heavier as the morning wore on, until he needed help pushing the cart up the hill from the market to Escopa. He told us he gave the money he earned to his son who was a policeman in a Rizal town and to his grandchildren, without regrets. For a long time after he stopped coming, people still had their leftover food ready for him in the morning.

Old people told the Institute of Philippine Culture of the Ateneo de Manila University in a study of Metro Manila’s urban poor areas Payatas and Baseco (2002) that they often went without food so the grandchildren would eat or have medicines or school uniforms.

The jobs the elderly do—scavenging, washing clothes, vending—are physically hard for an old man or woman. Ed Gerlock of the Coalition of Services of the Elderly (COSE) says many elderly people walk every day from the Bagong Silangan urban poor area behind the main office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development to the Payatas garbage dump where they scavenge all day.

Recently, I met a Baseco woman. Her name is Felista Victoriana. At age 62, she typifies the selflessness of the aged. She has been a scavenger since she was eight years old. Her husband left her with five children, but by thriftiness and hard work she was able to put all the children through high school. None of them can help her now, however, because they have huge problems of their own. She lives with a son (who can’t work because of asthma) and her grandson. She is their sole support. Felista scavenges every day in the Divisoria area for plastic and earns about P50 a day. With this she buys a kilo of rice. The rest of her food comes from the garbage of the Jollibee fast-food chain. She works every day of the week from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.

I asked if she expected any help from government. She looked at me with her mouth open as if I were telling a joke she couldn’t understand.

“I pray each night, though I’m not baptized,” she said, “I pray I stay healthy because if I can’t work, all three of us will die.”

“Are you angry with the way your life turned out?” I asked.

“Once,” she said, but then she didn’t remember the circumstances. She added, “No, I’m not angry. I just want to stay in Baseco, though there is much stagnant water there.”

Old people are not just waiting for someone to help them. They also work together to help one another. COSE members have a Burial Fund: if an old person pays a little every month, the cooperative will take care of their burial expenses. Incidentally, one of the oldest social welfare programs of the Catholic Church in the United States was the Bona Mors (Happy Death) program which operated just like COSE does. COSE has found that elderly people can become caregivers to other old people or to children, for a small stipend. In Nairobi, Kenya old people run a community day care center. One or two elderly women take care of all the children in a block while their mothers work. The mothers give the women a modest fee each day.

The COSE says there is a bill in the Senate, sponsored by Sen. Edgardo Angara, that would provide for the social pension. It asks that every old person be given P1,500 a month. It’s not much, but it is all that old people like Felista make. COSE officials told me every other country in Asia has recognized the value of this pension. Surely it is possible to do the same here, knowing that every peso given to older people is poured back constructively into the economy for the common good, and the grandchildren’s food, schooling and health. It will also help the old people stay healthy and happy. In the twilight of their lives they deserve that.

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