Greetings!

I am writing this letter to hopefully trigger someone concerned or at least to point out a creeping debauchery affecting one of our more valued members of society, the Senior Citizens (SC). Let me begin by personally telling my experience in availing the SC discounts from known, and frequented drug stores in the municipality of Goa Camarines Sur.

My father is a Senior citize, half paralyzed by two consecutive cranial infarction (stroke), thus unable to secure his own medications, unable to write and unable to move as normally as most of us can but nevertheless a senior citizen with a booklet, an ID card, and given that the supposedly accorded privilege for an SC. These are the facts of my personal experience.

1. He was hospitalized at St. John Hospital Goa, where he was of course afforded with the privileges of an SC for having been confined, though they tell me after receiving the bill that the SC discount they give for MEDICINES was only ten percent (10%) because of some reason that the medicines they provided where branded. And so I found it useless to haggle so I paid the bill halfheartedly because I still needed to attend to my father.

2. Given that, we were going home that day, “take home medicines” where given by the attending physicians, and so I decided to buy them outside the hospital for hope of actually availing the discounts proper for Senior citizens.

3. It has been my habit that I canvass first the prices of medicines before I purchase them from a certain drugstore, so canvass I did, it came out that for example a certain medication for “high blood pressure” (linagliptin) was priced at around 56-59.50 per piece in the following drugstores:

a. St. Martin de pores Drugstoreb. St. Padre PIo Drugstorec. South Star Drug

4. I decided to buy from Drugstore a. but I asked the Pharmacy Assistant First: Do you give discounts to Senior Citizens? If so How Much?The answer shocked me: “Two (2) percent po sir!” I even repeated the question, thinking I may have misheard the answer, but the same answer came to me. The Senior Citizen Discount in Drugstore A was only two (2) percent.

5. I decided to ask the same question to Drugstore b and again the same rate was given to me.

6. So finally I decided to buy from Drugstore c., the most known and most frequented (I suppose, given the good number of establishments they have in the area) I did not get the same answer Thank fully I was given the 20% SC discount, and 8% tax exemption (though I know it should be 12%).

7. What shocked me from drugstore c. was that they say I could only purchase the medication I mentioned earlier for a week’s consumption. That actually pissed me off because I had the proper prescription, indicating the number of medications my father would be needing and yet they say I need to come back again next week because their store policy only allowed me to buy the medicine for a week’s consumption.

Reviewing the Text and the IRR of the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010, I believe that it is noteworthy to highlight the following violations of this drugstores:

I have written this, not for the sake of recovering what I have paid for, but for the sake of a good number of our population who may apparently be less aware of how much or up to what extent their privileges are supposedly afforded to them. I hope you take action on this.Conduct your own investigation if it may please you to verify this outburst of complaints.

I have sent copies of this to the OSCA,DSWD, Mayors Office, and the CSC to ensure that this letter does not remain a piece of paper.