GSIS hit over non-payment of pre-need plans

BACOLOD CITY, Philippines  — Twenty-nine teachers of the Bacolod City National High School (BCNHS), some of them have already retired from the service, lambasted the Government Service Insurance System for its failure to pay the premiums of their pre-need plans.

BCNHS Faculty Union president Yolly Vingno on Wednesday said GSIS had offered them pre-need memorial service plan under Genesis Plan. Most of them have availed themselves of the plan in 1996 and were supposed to be fully paid in 2001.

Faculty member Shirley Hilado however said that, when her mother died last December and she claimed the benefits for this pre-need plan, she was surprised when told by the funeral parlor that it would no longer accept Genesis Plans because the servicing institution, Prudential Life Plan, had stopped paying the funeral establishment since 2007.

She said she was also told that Prudential Life had stopped servicing Genesis plan holders because they had allegedly stopped paying Prudential Life.

Angered, she went to the GSIS to demand for an explanation but she was in turn only told that they cannot do anything since there was a change in the administration of GSIS and the least they could do is to refund her contract price of P9,660.

Hilado said, under the plan, she was supposedly entitled to avail of the current price of a burial service, which is about P40,000. She religiously paid P161 monthly for five years which was deducted from her salary and remitted to GSIS, she said.

Alarmed of the problem, she also notified her co-teachers at BCNHS who have similarly availed of the Genesis pre-need plan.

At a press conference Wednesday in their school, the teachers demanded that GSIS continue their pre-need insurance with Genesis Plans.

Vingno said more teachers around the province and the country could have bought Genesis Plans and may have not known this problem until now. She tried going to the Bacolod office of GSIS Chairman Daniel Lacson Jr. to seek his help on the matter but he was not around then.

In an interview with radio stations yesterday, Lacson said he will meet the teachers for a dialogue next week.

Meanwhile, the teachers also raised other problems they have encountered with GSIS. They said their payments with GSIS has not been updated regularly on the GSIS website, which gives them doubt whether their remittances are being accurately recorded or not.

One retired faculty member said that when she received her lump sum pension of P65,000, GSIS deducted from it P25,000 for arrears, but the school's accounting office certified they have remitted her contributions regularly and she had no arrears.

Another teacher said she had tried to apply for a loan through the GSIS e-card but the machine said she could not avail herself of it. When she inquired from the GSIS office, she was told that a loan of P10,000 was taken in her name.

Vingno said they are hoping that their problems could be addressed by Lacson, who is former governor of Negros Occidental, and be assured that they will have no other problems with GSIS. (FREEMAN)