Kampilan’s open letter to the President

At the outset, allow me to introduce briefly my organization. The Kampilan Peacekeepers Association, Inc. is  a non-stock, non-profit fraternal organization of retired soldiers and surviving spouses duly registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on 12 October 2010. It is managed by seven officers and members of the Board of Trustees with the undersigned as its founding president and chief executive officer. Currently, the association has more than 20,000 regular members.

One of the objectives of the association is to enhance the morale and welfare of its members to include their surviving spouses and orphans. Pension is the No. 1 morale booster of the aging and ailing military retirees/pensioners and surviving spouses of which the government has not paid the long-overdue pension arrears from 2000 to 2013. As pensioners we are also deprived of our right to choose the remittance bank or financial institution that allows us to earn even a meager interest to our pension and at the same time provide us the convenience in claiming our pension.

Effective 01 January 2014, the DBM directive to the AFP to transfer AFP Pension Payment to Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) will be implemented. This is dictatorship Mr. President. The AFP pensioners have sacrificed their lives for more than 30 years for peace, freedom and democracy to earn their blood money pensions and they will be made to sacrifice again by losing the small interest they will be getting from the Armed Forces and Police Savings and Loan Association, Inc. (AFPSLAI), Philippine Army Finance Center Producers Integrated Cooperative (PAFCPIC), and others to augment their meager monthly pensions to be able to survive and live a decent life. Worse Mr. President, we will be required by the AFP Finance Center to execute an affidavit authorizing the Chief, AFP Finance to do whatever they like to do with the pensioner’s bank account. This is tantamount to surrendering our right to our hard earned pensions to the Chief of AFP Finance Center and/or his duly authorized representative.

In view of the foregoing, we humbly appeal to your kind heart Mr. President, the father of the Filipino people, to stop the implementation of the DBM directive/memorandum to transfer the AFP pension payment to Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) and allow us pensioners to earn a little amount from AFP Financial organizations to cope up with the spiraling cost of maintenance medicines and basic commodities. Mr. President, please disallow the Chief of AFP Finance Center of the authority to any action unfavorable to pensioners bank account. The kind resolve of His Excellency to the aforesaid appeal will greatly affect the lives of the more than 117,000 aging and ailing AFP pensioners and surviving spouses.

Thank you and more power to you Mr.  President.