Elderly people are calling for the pensionable age to be lowered to 60 from 77 to benefit more people who are unable to find work.

While a pension for the desperately poor was introduced in 2010, the Coalition of Services of the Elderly (COSE) said yesterday it is aimed at less than 15 percent of them.

COSE organizes activities annually for Elderly Filipino Week in the first week of October. The group is funded by London-based HelpAge, the Misereor German Catholic Bishops’ Organization for Development Cooperation and Cordaid, the Catholic Organisation for Relief and Development Aid, a Dutch development agency.

Fransiskus Kupang, executive director of COSE said government’s budget allocation in 2012 is less than in 2011. “There are fears that in a significant number of cases, it is not the most needy who actually receive the social pension,” Kupang added.

He said coalition leaders and members are asking the government to suspend temporarily implementation of the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010 if they could not come up with a credible list of pensioners aged 77-80.

“Who is actually supposed to be qualified on the list of pensioners? Few older people actually reach 77 years of age. That’s why we want them to lower the age requirement to 60 years old,” Kupang said.

The National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) estimates the number of desperately poor at 1.2 million of the 7 million older people in the country in 2011.