MANILA: At least four in 10 elderly Filipinos, 60 years old and above, continue to have no access to pension, a major problem for the government which could worsen mainly due to rising life expectancy in the country.

This warning was aired by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which conducted a regional study on how nations are dealing with problems confronting their senior citizens.

“A majority of the elderly citizens in the country do not have income security; they do not have pension, despite a significant increase in allocation,” the study said.

Khalid Hassan, the ILO director for the Philippines, pointed out that the country is lagging behind other Asian and Pacific nations like China, Thailand, Mongolia, Brunei and Timor Leste in dealing with this particular problem.

These countries achieved this, Hassan said, by expanding considerably their coverage through the use of universal tax-funded pensions.

Hassan acknowledged the Philippines has also made significant progress in providing social security to their elderly but he emphasised: “Despite progress in recent years, the Philippine social protection system retains serious gaps.”

In particular, Hassan warned the problem could worsen, pointing out the life expectancy among Filipinos has risen by five years between 2000 and 2015, considered the fastest increase since the 1960s.

“This makes the low pension coverage a particularly troubling problem, creating additional financial burdens for family, as the ratio between elderly parents and adult children rises,” the study noted.

It added that at least 1.28 million elderly Filipinos have availed of the retirement benefits granted them by the Social Security System (SSS), the state-run pension fund for the private sector as of March this year.

A separate data from the Department of Social Wefare and Development (DSWD) indicated that there are eight million Filipino senior citizens but only 2.8 million of them have become beneficiaries of the agency’s social pension for the elderly found to be “indigent.”

Nevertheless, the study pointed the problems could be alleviated since the Duterte administration has made social protection as one of its major agenda as reflected by the Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022 launched in January this year.