Response of the GSIS to the privilege speech of Sen. TG Guingona

We, the Government Service Insurance System, laud the efforts of Senator TG Guingona in expressing his concern over the welfare of our public school teachers as demonstrated in his October 5, 2010 privilege speech. As everyone celebrates World Teachers’ Day, Sen. Guingona’s account of the situation of our public school teachers could not come at a more opportune time.

The GSIS is one with the good Senator in his desire to uplift the condition of our public school teachers. Like him, we believe that teachers should be afforded the highest priority, because they do form the majority of the GSIS membership.

But while Sen. Guingona seeks fairness for the teachers, we ask him and the public to look at the GSIS with the same brand of fairness.

We respectfully submit that the good senator consider the following:

1. While we at GSIS admit that the years 2008 and 2009 were difficult years for us, owing to the problems encountered in our system during these years, we have taken steps to address these. As a result, we significantly increased our capacity, processing 1,301,114 loans as of September 2010. This is 161 percent higher than the 497,368 loans we processed in the same period last year.

2. The Global Investments Program considerably diversified our portfolio and managed to generate substantial amount to the coffers of the Fund, as the total assets of the GSIS over the last nine years have grown by 216 percent to P572.4 billion as of end-2009 from P181.1 billion in 2000 despite the economic crisis. 

3. The Premium-Based Policy institutionalizes the fair thought that one should get the benefit based on what one has paid. The CLIP and the APL, for that matter, also require one to settle overdue loans when getting a new loan or receiving a benefit. All pension or provident funds, whether government- or privately-owned, here and abroad, apply the same policy. Notwithstanding the foregoing, as part of our fresh mandate to improve GSIS services to its beneficiaries, we are open to reviewing these policies.

It is also worth noting that on the eve of Teachers’ Day and the day that the good Senator delivered his privilege speech, the GSIS and the Department of Education just signed a Memorandum of Understanding to update the service records of all DepEd teaching and non-teaching personnel. This will pave the way for a concrete resolution of problems pertaining to the service records of the public school teachers.

We reiterate that we share the senator’s concerns about the plight of our teachers and reaffirm our commitment to resolving the outstanding issues affecting the education sector and ultimately, the entire membership of GSIS.