Friday, June 13, 2008 DepEd workers to sue GSIS chief
THE 40,000-strong Department of Education-National Employees Union (DepEd-NEU) is set to file criminal and administrative charges before the Office of the Ombudsman against Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) president Winston Garcia for his failure to pay the mandatory dividends due them for the past three years.
"He (Garcia) could be held liable criminally for estafa as well as administrative and civil liability for GSIS's continued failure to pay the dividend," said DepEd-NEU president Domingo Alidon in a press conference at the DepEd central office in Pasig City.
He said that rank-and-file workers have not received their dividends for no apparent reason, but that the case was only brought to his attention when union members from the provinces complained of GSIS inaction on the issue.
"There is no legal basis for not paying our rightful dividends without G-WAP enrollment. It is clear to us that Garcia is making his own laws to enable him to use our funds for his personal crusades," Alidon said.
"The GSIS claim that dividends will not be paid to members who have not enrolled in the G-WAP program is clearly whimsical and undeniable," Alidon added.
G-WAP is a computer system used for the processing of loan transactions. It includes the E-card where all details of GSIS members could be accessed.
Alidon, together with other union officials, said they are giving the GSIS one week starting Thursday to pay them the dividend.
"Within the week, GSIS should start paying our dividends or else we will file the charges," he said adding that the charges will be on top of the case for violation of Republic Act (RA) 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices they had earlier filed against Garcia before the ombudsman.
Based on the current GSIS membership of 1.3 million government workers, the approximate total amount of dividends payable over the past three years has reached P3.9 billion exclusive of interest.
The union said that if indeed GSIS is earning as Garcia has been claiming then they should be paid the dividends which they added is very important to boost their income considering the skyrocketing cost of basic commodities today.
At the same time, the group reiterated their call for the formation of an insurance system separate from the GSIS saying that Garcia has already outlived its usefulness to its members.
"We appeal to our lawmakers and even to the President (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) to allow the creation of an entity separate from GSIS. We would like to have our own insurance system that really caters to our needs. If the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police have their own system, why not us? I think we, through the help of professional managers, could better manage such a system," Alidon said.
But the military pension system under the Retirement Separation Benefits System (RSBS) has also been rocked with controversy with several of its officers facing charges due to the fund's insolvency.
The group also batted for a change in the level of representation of DepEd employees in the GSIS board saying that despite constituting more than half of the insurance system membership they are just represented by one official, either from a representative from the Philippine Public School Teachers Association (PPSTA) or the Philippine Association of Schools Superintendents (Pass).
Of the GSIS's 1.3 million members, 567,800 are teachers and non-teaching personnel of DepEd.
A nationwide "signature campaign" against the GSIS management has been launched to gather the signatures of their members, the group said. It will be presented later to lawmakers and Malacañang as a proof of discontent with the present GSIS management, Alidon said.
The signature campaign has two main focuses: To pressure Garcia into resigning and for the formation of a separate insurance system.
Aside from the DepEd-NEU, another group of teachers denounced Garcia for passing on the pension fund's "system losses" to its members.
Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) chairman Antonio Tinio pointed out that one of the issues raised by Garcia against the Manila Electric Company (Meralco), the highly unpopular practice of charging system losses to consumers, may also be attributed to the GSIS.
In the electric power industry, system loss refers to electricity lost due to technical inefficiency or pilferage. The anti-electricity pilferage law (Republic Act 7832) allows private utilities to charge up to 9.5 percent of their system losses to consumers.
ACT likened the GSIS policy of recovering unpaid premiums from its members through deductions from the benefits due them to Meralco's practice of charging system losses to consumers.
"Garcia should look in the mirror first. He has been charging the system losses of GSIS to its members ever since he introduced his notorious 'premium-based policy' in 2003," said Tinio.
Under the premium-based policy, the benefits of GSIS members are computed and paid out based on the actual premium payments received by GSIS. Before its adoption in 2003, GSIS benefits were based on a member's years of service.
Through the premium-based policy, lost revenues of GSIS due to their failure to collect premium payments, failure of government agencies to remit premium payments or due to corruption are recovered from GSIS members in the form of huge deductions from the retirement and other benefits due them, explained Tinio.
The group said this is in violation of RA 8291 mandating that members' benefits shall be computed based on years of service rendered, not the amount of premium paid. Moreover, the law also provides a government guarantee that members shall receive their benefits in full as and when they fall due.
Sun.Star tried but failed to contact Garcia for his comment on the issue.
(AH/Sunnex)
