MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education has revoked the accreditation of Manila Teachers’ Savings and Loan Association Inc. (MTSLAI), citing an order from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) even as it drew an outcry from teachers who looked at the lending company as a credit lifeline.
The agency’s decision made MTSLAI ineligible for DepEd’s automatic payroll deduction system (APDS), which allowed the lender to deduct loan payments from teachers’ salaries directly.
“One of the serious grounds is when the Certificate of Authority (license to operate) of the entity is canceled or terminated by the [Bangko Sentral], among others,” Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte said in DepEd Order No. 5 released on Monday.
The BSP, in a letter dated Nov. 23, 2022, informed DepEd that it revoked the license to operate of MTSLAI as a nonstock savings and loan association because of a “willful violation” of Republic Act No. 8367 or the Revised Non-Stock Savings and Loan Association Act of 1997.
The BSP did not specify the violations committed by the loan association.
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) said many of its members considered the agency’s automatic deduction system a “huge help” to teachers.
According to Ruby Bernardo, president of ACT National Capital Region (NCR) Union, teachers could take out loans from MTSLAI of up to P500,000, depending on the “capacity of their payslip.”
Deductions may continue
With MTSLAI, teachers’ loan payments would be automatically deducted from their monthly pay, sparing them from the inconvenience of going to different lending institutions to pay their loans.
Duterte said that under the mutual aid system membership of MTSLAI, the collection of payroll deductions from the date of revocation on Nov. 25 would continue for the next three months or until an employee requests that it be stopped.
For loans granted before Nov. 25, “the collection of deductions for these existing loans in the APDS for MTSLAI… shall continue up to the termination dates reflected in the payslip and until fully paid.”
Duterte said MTSLAI may still continue to enforce its loans or contracts with teachers and DepEd employees by collecting directly from them, but not under the APDS anymore.
Proceeds
Bernardo said DepEd NCR told her group that loan payments from November to December would be given back to them so they could remit the payments over the counter.
“The problem with that, and this has been our problem for so long, is the arrears, because the loan was not remitted in a definite time,” Bernardo told the Inquirer on Tuesday.
She pointed out that teachers who took out loans from MTSLAI automatically became members, and even after paying the full amount of the loan, the lender would continue getting monthly P250 deductions from the borrower for its savings and mutual aid program.
Of that amount, P200 goes to the teachers’ savings account, which they may withdraw every five years, while the remaining P50 is set aside for a retirement fund.
The question now, according to Bernardo, is what would happen to the proceeds of that P250 contribution.