Pag-IBIG Fund offers penalty condonation

The Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) and the Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG Fund) announced Thursday that the Fund is offering penalty condonation to delinquent companies or employers.

Eligible under the program are employers who are unregistered with the Fund, those whose applications for waiver from Fund coverage were denied but who failed to register, and companies that are duly registered with the Fund but did not collect employee contributions and did not remit employer counterpart.

Pag-IBIG Chief Executive Officer Jaime Fabiaña stressed that employers who collected membership contributions and short-term loan amortization payments from their respective employees, but failed to remit these to the Fund are excluded from the condonation of penalties.

He said that “eligible employers must file their applications for penalty condonation until the last working day before December 31,2009.

Fabiaña said these employers will be required to submit to the Fund all unremitted employer contributions from the time their current employees should have been covered by Pag-IBIG up to the point of approval of their application for penalty condonation. They shall also be required to collect and remit to the Fund, employee and employer contributions due for the current remittance period.

All penalty charges incurred by the employer from the first month of delinquency up to the point of approval of application will be condoned as long as the employer settles his outstanding total obligations within 30 days from approval of application. In case the employer is financially incapable of remitting the required contributions in full, he may submit a plan of payment within seven days from approval of application, subject to the Fund’s approval.

“Any company, however, who violates the approved plan of payment by defaulting or short-remitting what is required, will lead to the restoration of penalties previously condoned. The Fund will also file the appropriate civil and/or criminal actions against the delinquent employer,” Fabiaña said.

Further, the employer who fails to collect and/or remit the employee and employer contributions due for the current period will also be charged a 3-percent penalty for every month of delay. –Manila Times