59 SSS veeps getting P100,000 per month

Twenty-three million Social Security System (SSS) members should know this: Billions of pesos in fund contributions not only were thrown into crony investments and loans during the tenure of Joseph Estrada’s neighbor Carlos Arellano as president. SSS also thrice raised the salaries and allowances of 59 vice presidents from September 1998 to May 1999. As a result, while SSS was losing money, the vice presidents were getting P100,000 or so per month.

Some of the VPs will argue that they deserve it. But going by finance industry salary rates, government compensation standards, and the performance of the others, SSS members deserve a thorough explanation of why such VPs are paid more than P300,000 per month – higher than what the president gets.

Deposed president Vitaliano Nañagas, whose SSS basic salary was pegged at P100,000 flat, has revealed an audit of behest investments in Belle Resources of Dante Tan and in the merger of Equitable with PCIBank. Newspapers quoted him as saying that executive vice-president Horacio Templo, senior vice-president Edgar Solilapsi and assistant vice-president Lilia Marquez were blamed, among others, by the auditors for the wasteful investments. The three also happened to have supported this week’s employee walkout at SSS against Nañagas’s supposed high-handedness. Do those workers know that Templo draws a basic salary of P289,916? Or that on top of that, he also gets P500 in emergency allowance, P9,000 in representation and transportation allowance, and P15,000 in discretionary funds? Or that, while Nañagas kept turning over to SSS the per diems he got for sitting in the boards of banks and companies in which SSS holds shares, Templo preferred to keep the hundreds of thousands he got for sitting in the same boards?

Solilapsi draws a monthly basic pay of P116,943, also higher than Nañagas’s. He further gets P500 in PERA, P7,500 in RATA, P5,000 in discretionary allowance, for a total of P129,943 – again higher than Nañagas’s total.

Marquez, like most assistant vice-presidents, gets a basic pay of P79,128, plus P500 in PERA, and P11,000 in RATA, for a total of P90,628.

In terms of basic salary, Nañagas was only No. 27 in rank. Twenty-six vice-presidents draw higher pay. (See table.) Nañagas’s total take-home pay, including allowances, was P123,265. The 26 VPs either exceed that or fall below by just a thousand pesos or so.

Thirty-three other VPs draw basic salaries ranging from P79,128 to P98,306 per month. Adding their allowances, they take home P90,628 to P115,056 per month.

Templo keeps saying he’d like to face investigation for the money that SSS put into Belle Resources, which Arellano has admitted was forced upon them by Estrada. Nañagas has sworn that aside from the Equitable-PCIBank merger, SSS money was also thrown into First Pacific’s buyout of PLDT and many other deals that were cooked inside Estrada’s chambers. Prosecutors in Estrada’s impeachment case last year and his ongoing trial for plunder computed P800 million in dirty commissions and kickbacks that the resigned President and SSS cohorts pinched.

SSS insiders, among them some of the 59 VPs, aver that Templo agitated the employees’ union to seek Nañagas’s ouster in the hope of escaping a probe. As executive vice president – the No. 2 man in the management totem pole who has seen SSS presidents come and go – Templo should explain to the 23 million members why there are 59 VPs in all. That’s a heavy burden for low-salaried SSS members to pay.

Templo might want to explain to the members why the SSS seems to be overstaffed, too. At the height of the walkout last Wednesday, the union head bragged to DZBB morning anchor Mike Enriquez that 95 percent of employees supported the oust-Nañagas campaign. Enriquez asked how low-salaried SSS members could draw emergency loans and retirees could collect pensions. Not to worry, the union boss replied, the "stay-behind" staff was making sure that no member services were disrupted. Whereupon Enriquez noted that, in that case, only five percent of the SSS staff could do 100 percent of the job.

And that’s where all this brouhaha began. Nañagas took one look at the SSS salary scale versus staff performance, and readily concluded that he needed to "out-source" certain technical services from private firms. He used the wrong terms for this – "privatization" – and thus invited the attention of militant and moderate labor groups who were allergic to the word. After all, the Napocor would be privatized under the Omnibus Power Act even after taxpayers wipe its slate clean of over P750 billion in loans and losses.

During teach-ins, employees were scared into believing they’d all be fired by Nañagas. They were taken for a ride. Any president worth his salt would question – in behalf of SSS members – why certain favored "rank-and-file" employees command P77,000 in basic pay while the majority get only P15,000.

SSS employees think they’ve won because Malacañang replaced Nañagas. What they might not realize is that, with their precedent of ousting their president for "dictatorial" management style and letting themselves be used by certain officers as cannon fodders, they might get a dose of their own medicine. SSS employees are necessarily members of Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), the counterpart mandatory mutual fund for government workers. Would they want GSIS to have 59 VPs all drawing salaries and perks of P100,000 to P300,000 per month? Would they want only five percent of the GSIS staff doing the work while 95 percent draw salaries up to P75,000 a month for nothing?

As for SSS members: Arise, you have nothing to lose but your lousy fund managers.