DepEd chief hits back at GSIS over teachers’ contributions
By Jerry E. Esplanada
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 20:53:00 02/26/2008
Filed Under: Wages & Pensions, Education
MANILA, Philippines -- Education Secretary Jesli A. Lapus hit back at the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) on Tuesday for putting the blame on the education department for the discrepancies in the updated service records and contribution reports of public school teachers.
"These problems can't be solved with GSIS public relations campaigns but with the real overhaul of GSIS members' servicing system," said Lapus.
"Our teachers are the biggest contributors to GSIS. It is only proper that they be given special attention by GSIS," he said.
The Manila Public School Teachers Association (MPSTA) blamed the GSIS for the delay in their receipt of benefits because of the state-run pension fund’s failure to resolve discrepancies in their contribution reports.
But over the weekend, Winston Garcia, the GSIS president and general manager, blamed the DepEd, saying it failed to submit the teachers’ updated service records and contribution reports.
Garcia said the GSIS was "ready to make the necessary corrections as long as the DepEd submits to us the updated service records."
Antonio Inocentes, the education undersecretary for GSIS affairs, said "it is not time to blame one another, rather it is time to buckle down and try to finish the huge streamlining works at all ends."
The militant Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), meanwhile, said the problem lay principally with the DepEd for its failure to update the teachers' service records.
ACT chair Antonio Tinio noted that "more than two years after the supposed deadline for its completion, the updating project headed by Iloilo division superintendent Raymundo Lapating is still unfinished."
Tinio has accused the DepEd of lying about the updating of teachers' service records.
He said that nearly a year after the deadline of the service records updating by the DepEd and the GSIS, "the department has submitted only 154,490 out of 508,361 service records."
"That's a mere 30.3 percent of the target. It's unconscionable," Tinio said.
Top DepEd officials have repeatedly disputed Tinio's claims. Lapus previously said the updating was "close to 90 percent" done.
Lapus said on Tuesday "record-keeping at [both DepEd and GSIS] are being streamlined with urgency."
Inocentes said the department was "close to completing the updating of teachers' service records but teachers based in the hinterlands and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao must validate them still."
"Only 6.6 percent of service records remain to be encoded and submitted to GSIS," he said.
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