Teachers’ groups said they got “another heartache” after several members received a dividend from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) of less than P100—not even enough to withdraw from an ATM.
Dividends or cash benefits are annual gains tied to the performance of the GSIS Social Insurance Fund and divided among members of the GSIS, to which the more than 900,000 public school teachers are the biggest contributors.
“We will ask our allies in both houses of Congress to conduct an inquiry into this grave insult,” said Benjo Basas, chair of the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition. “This is not the way you treat the biggest investor to your fund.”
Raymond Basilio, secretary general of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, told the Inquirer that some members of the nationwide union reported receiving as little as P70.
In a statement a day after Christmas, the GSIS said that it had started distributing a total P174 million in cash dividends two days earlier. The dividend was given to all whose compulsory life insurance plans have been in force at least one year as of Dec. 31, 2018.
“We will automatically credit the cash benefit of our members to their eCard or Unified Identification Card,” GSIS chair Rolando Ledesma Macasaet said.
“Teachers were happy when the GSIS announced that the dividends for this year will be credited to their account, but most of us were surprised to learn that dividends were only two digits,” Basas said.
A GSIS official explained that the amount of dividend depended on the number of years that the life insurance had been enforced.
“The GSIS dividend is just small since we are not a cooperative where members invest for item capitalization,” the official added.
Among these teachers was Sheryl Capina, a Grade 4 teacher in the Calabarzon region, who told the Inquirer she received only P24. She was “saddened and dismayed” by the cash benefit she received.