OFFBEAT MAIL

With growing complaints from pension fund members, mostly comprising of government retirees and active employees who continue to be milked of their hard-earned contributions in the hope that they could make use of their efforts in the future, the Government Service Insurance System ( GSIS ) continues to render disservice to its millions of members. Perhaps, it's about time that the national government should do something to dip its hands on this pension fund agency by overhauling its present set up so that it can function truly and effectively as the lone caretaker of the billions of monthly contributions collected from national and local government employees. As of late, GSIS insiders were caught taking advantage of their position by secretly funneling funds that were not supposed for them, but from those who were already dead. And who would imagine that some GSIS employees, who knew the tricks of the trade on how to deprive thousands of their benefits without even applying for...

Over the decades, state pension funds running to billions of pesos have been amassed through regular premium deductions taken from the monthly salaries of the millions of lowly public servants. It is an established government policy that eventually capitalized on the hard earnings of civil servants, most of whom are still hankering to live comfortably into retirement. Others who could not stay longer in service may just have to quit and look for other good opportunities somewhere else, while some of them are still strong to engage in another well-paying drudgery. While millions of civil servants in the local and national government offices labor hard to make a living, employees and officials of the government's two pension fund agencies wallow in convenience and comfort by receiving more that what ordinary public servants get on their monthly salaries, minus deductions. Of these two agencies, the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) is the only semi-government organization t...