EDITORIAL - GSIS pensions must be realistic and equitable

If there is one area where reform is finally taking place under this administration, it is in the Government Service Insurance Corporation or GSIS. And while reform does not produce results overnight, at least at the GSIS things have been done that are readily apparent. It may be too early to crow, but let us crow anyway. For after going to a very poor and ineffectual start, this administration needs one certainly.

At the GSIS, president and CEO Robert Vergara has stripped his salary and allowances by 40 percent. The per diems of the members of the board of trustees have been slashed to just P2,500 per meeting. And the number of vice presidents have been drastically reduced from 36 (I did not even know there were that many) to just 21. This should effectively reconfigure the agency from being top-heavy to being lean and mean.

But that should not be the only reform that should be taking place at the GSIS. The more meaningful reform should take place where the core being of the GSIS is — in the welfare and well being of its general membership and beneficiaries. After all, the reform taking place at the top is largely symbolic and is something the ordinary member could not care less.

The real and lasting reform that the GSIS members would like to see is the golden benefits they can derive from their money. It is their money, after all, that is the foundation upon which the GSIS is built. All talk about things at the top, be they about reforms or whatever, would be preposterous unless they affect the lives of the general membership in a meaningful and beneficial way.

To be fair, the GSIS is already moving in this direction. Pensioners are already assured of a one percent increase in their pensions every year. But provisions must be made to counter the effects of inflation on their take. A one percent annual increase in the monthly pension of pensioners as against an inflation rate that is already nibbling at two digits is ridiculous, to say the least.

Pensioners, by their very nature, are no longer economically productive. Most of them look at their pensions as their sole means of getting by. And clearly what they are getting is not enough to get by. It is not even enough to keep body and soul together. What pensioners no longer spend on other things, they do on the most basic things — food and medicine.

And there is a segment of the membership that the GSIS has deliberately consigned to unconscionable inhumanity. Older pensioners, who actually need more than the younger ones, are getting lower pensions than those who retired at later dates. Why is this? Is this because they are already so old as to be the butt of that terrible joke about being in the “pre-departure” area? The GSIS should level all pensions. The older ones do not lose their rights and equity by age.