PUBLIC school teachers got another “insult” from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) when many of them discovered that the dividend they will receive for this year is below P100.
Teachers were happy when the GSIS announced that the dividends for this year will be credited to their account but most of us were surprised to learn that dividends were only two digits.
In a statement dated Dec. 26, 2019, GSIS President and General Manager (PGM) Rolando Ledesma Macasaet said, “We will automatically credit the cash benefit of our members to their eCard or Unified Multipurpose Identification (UMID) card.”
Thus, teachers and other government employees checked on the ATMs and their online GSIS account only to find out that the amount credited by the GSIS cannot be withdrawn.
Days before Christmas, Congress assured us of a salary increase which is way below than what the government promised.
Now for New Year’s Day celebration, the GSIS gave us another heartache this holiday season, the supposed most wonderful time of the year.
On our Facebook page, we made a survey on the amount of the dividends received by the teachers and many of those who responded proved that their dividends were below the amount eligible for bank transaction.
Some of them even attached the screenshot of their dividends for several years which shows almost the same amount. Dividends or cash benefits are the supposed annual gains given to members of the GSIS and is mandated under the GSIS Law (Republic Act 8291). The amount of dividends, according to GSIS, is dependent on the financial performance of its Social Insurance Fund.
For this, we would like to ask the GSIS how did they come up with such amount? What formula did they use to compute the cash benefits given to teachers? Finally, would they be willing to disclose the amount of bonuses and dividends the GSIS officials and employees received this year?
We will raise this matter to Congress once the session resume this January.
We will ask our allies in both Houses of Congress to conduct an inquiry to this grave insult. This is not the way you treatment the biggest investor to your fund.
We tried to reach PGM Macasaet for a dialogue and even formally asked for one. We have sent formal query with the GSIS on several matters and we have also asked PGM Macasaet for a dialogue for several times.
But it seems that the sentiments of the biggest contributors to the fund are not that important.