REPUBLIC Act No. 10606 of 2013 defines indigent as a person who has no visible means of income, or whose income is insufficient for the subsistence of his family, as determined by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), based on specific criteria.
Although being an indigent really has no direct bearing on the age of a person, a House Bill was introduced a few years ago seeking to define an indigent senior citizen as “any elderly who is without pension or permanent source of income, compensation, or regular and appropriate financial assistance from his/her relatives to support his/her basic needs, as determined by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in consultation with the National Coordinating and Monitoring Board (NCMB).”
Just in case you missed the point in the previous paragraph, not just anyone could claim indigency status. In both the legal references stated in the previous paragraph, only the DSWD could determine whether a person is an indigent or not, regardless of whether he or she is a senior citizen or not.
I have no complaints against the legal definitions as set forth, but how I wish there would be clearer definitions of the term “poorest of the poor” as used by the government, and the term “extreme poverty” as used by the United Nations (UN) in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Related to that, how I wish we would be able to reconcile our method of measuring poverty with that of the UN.
I am raising these issues because as I understand it, anyone who belongs to the “poorest of the poor” and those who are experiencing “extreme poverty” should be automatically considered as indigents, no questions asked.
While I believe that that is a fair statement to make, that I think would raise another question and that is the question of how we would draw the line between the “ordinary poor” and the “poorest of the poor”. Not that I would want to complicate this discussion, but it seems to me that those who are experiencing “extreme poverty” might even be poorer than those who are considered as the “poorest of the poor”.
It is interesting to note that the government has practically abolished the Regional Wage Boards (RWBs), in effect decreeing that there would be only one minimum wage for the entire country.
I am curious about that move, because I have always believed that the cost of living in every region should have a direct correlation to the minimum wage in the region. (To be continued)/PN
