Only Osca ID card for discounts?

Last MaY, I went to buy my medicines from Mercury Drug-Ever Gotesco branch, Pasig City. I gave the sales lady my Osca (Office of Senior Citizens Affairs) booklet. When she asked for my Osca ID card, I told her I had misplaced it and I offered other ID cards with my birth date, but she didn’t accept them, because, she said, the Osca ID was a Department of Health requirement. She even called the branch manager and the area manager, but both gave the same answer.

I told them that lawyer Romulo Macalintal sued two restaurants for refusing to accept other ID cards as proof of senior citizenship, which the law allows, but they insisted that “we are just following DOH requirements.”

I hope the DOH leadership gets to read this so they can comment and clarify this matter before I file a case against Mercury Drug.

Doesn’t the ID card provision in the Senior Citizens Law that is applicable to restaurants apply as well to drugstores and other commercial establishments?

—ANA MONICA V. GALSIM, MD,

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