Why is SSS requiring pensioners’ personal appearance?

What is up with the Social Security System and its Annual Confirmation of Pensioners (Acop) program? Supposedly, SSS will send a letter-notice to a pensioner directing him to make a personal appearance to confirm his continued entitlement to the pension.

However, as experienced by my mother and numerous senior citizens, the letter-notice seems to have been dispensed with. Instead, SSS suspends the pension, forcing the retirees to comply with the requirement of personal appearance. And as if the suspension wasn’t enough, pensioners are made to line up for hours (SSS doesn’t have a special lane for senior citizens). And once they have complied, it will take at least two months for SSS to reinstate the pension.

These people are on a pension for a reason. I don’t know if the purpose of SSS’ Acop is to confirm retirees who are still alive or to decrease the actual number of pensioners by reducing their chances of survival.

I just hope the Bureau of Internal Revenue doesn’t find out how SSS is running the Acop, otherwise it might just adopt the strategy and suspend a citizen’s right to basic services until proof of payment of taxes is submitted.

—OLIVER S. GARCIA,

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