By Benjamin Pulta
The
Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday said internment services for senior citizens are
covered by the 20-percent discount provided by Republic Act 7432, or the Senior
Citizens Act, as amended.
In its decision, the SC en banc granted the
petition filed by government lawyers and set aside a 2018 decision of the
Cagayan de Oro City Regional Trial Court (RTC), which excluded interment
services from the coverage of the statutorily mandated senior citizen discount
on “funeral and burial services.”
The petition before the SC was filed by the
State, through the Office of the Solicitor General, the Office of the Senior
Citizens Affairs, and the Department of Social Welfare and Development, and
questioned the Cagayan RTC which in turn had ruled in favor of the suit
initiated by a private firm, Pryce Corporation Inc.
The firm, which is engaged in the business of
selling memorial lots and offering interment services, argued that interment
service is not among the services entitled to the 20 percent discount provided
under RA 7432.
The RTC had ruled that the Implementing Rules
and Regulations (IRR) of RA 9994, or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010,
only mentioned the services of purchase of casket or urn, embalming, hospital
morgue, and transport of the body to the intended burial site.
The RTC held that the service of interment was
not included as one of the benefits covered. It concluded that the digging of
land for the grave of the deceased, the concreting of the gravesite, and the
other services done during the actual burial were not subject to the discount.
Ruling otherwise, the Supreme Court emphasized
that the Senior Citizens Act is a law created to grant a bundle of benefits in
favor of senior citizens or those at least 60 years old, giving flesh to the
declared policy of motivating senior citizens to contribute to nation building
and encouraging their families and communities to reaffirm the Filipino
tradition of caring for the senior citizens.
“Death may be the end of one’s life. But from
the perspective of those left behind, there are things that survive a person’s
demise. For the romantics, it is the memories and feelings that linger long after
the passing of a loved one. For the pragmatics and businesspersons alike, the
financial aspects of funeral and burial are matters that persist even after one
is laid to rest,” said the Court.
Elucidating on the scope of services covered by
the subject 20 percent discount on funeral and burial services, the Court said
that both RA 9257 and RA 9994, in amending RA 7432, do not provide for an exact
definition of the term “funeral and burial services.”
Notably, it said that the said laws likewise do
not limit the scope of the services falling under “funeral and burial
services.”
The Court added that as pointed out by Justice
Amy C. Lazaro-Javier in her Concurring Opinion that it would be unreasonable to
infer that Congress intended to differentiate between the deceased’s final
solace for the purpose of granting the 20 percent discount absent a clear
legislative intent to the contrary.
The Court said that based on the definition of
the term “burial” as it is commonly understood, “burial service” pertains to any
service offered or provided in connection with the final disposition,
entombment, or interment of human remains.
It held that it follows that burial services
necessarily include interment services, such as digging the land for the
deceased person’s grave, its concreting, and other services being done during
the actual burial.
This conclusion, said the Court, was supported
by the IRRs which prescribe the guidelines in the application of the 20 percent
discount on funeral and burial services in a comparison of the IRRs of RA 9257
and RA 9994 shows that the two are substantially the same.
The exception is that Section 6 of the IRR of
RA 9994 expounded on the term “other related services” by including a sample
list of “services” and excluding obituary publication and cost of memorial
plot.
The Court ruled that the enumeration in Section
6 is not exclusive. It stressed that the phrase ‘other related services’ does
not refer only to the enumerated examples so as to exclude interment services.
The Court maintained that this interpretation
was in keeping with the policies and objectives of the law, particularly of RA
9994 which echoes Section 4, Article XV of the Constitution declaring that it
is the duty of the family to take care of its elderly members while the state
may design programs of social security for them.
The Court found that the exclusion by the RTC
of interment services from the coverage of the 20 percent senior citizen
discount is not provided under the law, and that the IRR, which does not
explicitly exclude interment services, cannot be interpreted to support the
lower court’s Resolution.
It likewise stressed that a law cannot be
amended by a mere regulation, and the administrative agency issuing the
regulation may not enlarge, alter, or restrict the provisions of the law it
administers. -- PNA
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