House OK’s bill on senior discounts

THE HOUSE of Representatives has approved on second reading a bill that seeks to exempt senior citizens from the value-added tax and increase their discounts on monthly electricity and water bills.

House Bill 10568 or the proposed Expanded Senior Citizens’ Act of 2010 limits the utility discount to a monthly consumption that does not exceed 150 kilowatt-hours and 30 cubic meters of water.

It will be applied per household regardless of the number of senior residents. A Senate counterpart bill is pending at the committee level.

Meanwhile, the House also approved on a second reading a bill that seeks to protect human rights defenders from harassment and intimidation.

House Bill 10576 or the proposed Human Rights Defenders Protection Act will mandate the state to respect their right to form groups and will bar it from freezing or seizing their bank accounts.

The government must also avoid using derogatory labels or tagging human rights defenders as “red,” “communists,” “terrorists” or “enemies of the state.”

The bill seeks to form a Human Rights Defenders Committee whose chairman and members will be chosen by the Commission on Human Rights along with representatives from the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates, Karapatan, Free Legal Assistance Group and the National Union of People’s Lawyers.

A counterpart bill is pending at the committee level in the Senate.

In a related development, Party-list Rep. Eric G. Yap has filed a bill that mandates free professional exams for poor Filipinos to level the playing field.

“Since the sole purpose of licensure examination is to identify those eligible with enough knowledge and experience necessary to perform the tasks on the job safely and competently, financial capacity or lack thereof must not serve as a barrier for graduates to take the exam,” he said in the bill’s explanatory note.

Under the measure, qualified indigent Filipinos must be certified by the Social Welfare department to be eligible to free exam fees. Beneficiaries may only avail themselves of the benefit once a year. — Russell Louis C. Ku