Teachers, DepEd employees in danger of losing GSIS contribution credits

MANILA, Philippines – Some 198,000 teachers and other employees of the Department of Education (DepEd) are in danger of losing credits in their contributions with the Government Service and Insurance System (GSIS) after officials admitted they failed to comply with some requirements of the pension fund, a House leader said yesterday.

House Assistant Majority Leader and Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles said DepEd officials admitted before a congressional inquiry on Monday that the agency failed to meet the deadline set by the GSIS for them to reconcile and update the service records of their personnel.

During the hearing conducted by the House committee on good government and public accountability chaired by Iloilo Rep. Jerry Treñas, GSIS officials declared they will be forced to adopt the outdated service records of the 198,000 government employees after DepEd failed to meet their February 28 deadline.

The investigation was sought by AVE party-list Rep. Eulogio Magsaysay through House Resolution 79, which alleged massive irregularities in the GSIS.

“The committee was told the GSIS will treat the outdated records as true even if it is to the detriment and disadvantage of the teachers. Sorry for them if they were among those whose records were not updated,” Nograles said.

“This is very disturbing because it only reveals the utter arrogance and apathy of those running the GSIS and an education department which seems to be so inept in managing the records of their own people,” he said.

It was also discovered during the hearing that a substantial amount of premiums were not remitted to GSIS by DepEd in 1997 until 1998 and this was supposed to be paid directly by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to GSIS.

To this day however, the DBM has yet to complete its payment to GSIS thereby forcing pro-rated deductions on the policy claims of affected DepEd employees and teachers.

“All the teachers know is that they have automatic GSIS deductions from their salaries and obviously the teachers just assume, it is being remitted to the GSIS. But that’s not the fault of the teachers. If the premiums are not being remitted, that’s the blunder of the DepEd so I don’t understand  why the teachers are being made to suffer,” Nograles said. –Paolo S. Romero (The Philippine Star)