PNP failed to install measures to weed out fake retirees—COA

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippine National Police has failed to fully implement adequate procedures to check the status of 59,380 police pensioners, raising fears that unqualified or fake pensioners will continue to cash out pensions and that legitimate pensioners are eased out, a 2011 Commission on Audit report on the agency states.

The COA said the PNP paid a total of P14,079,154,000 in 2011 and P10,947,886,000 in 2010 in pension benefits, and P1,544,597,000 in 2011 and P2,189,317,000 in 2010 in retirement benefits.

The PNP Retirement and Benefits Administration Service (PRBS) is the national administrative support unit of the PNP that administers the retirement, separation and death benefits of PNP personnel.

The PNP entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) on April 15, 2011, with the National Statistics Office (NSO) for the identification of pensioners and beneficiaries who are already deceased, have remarried or are over-aged.

The MOA requires the PNP to submit the list of pensioners to be matched with NSO records. The NSO, in return, will provide the PNP with information and data on the facts of birth, death and marriage of the retirees and their beneficiaries based on the civil registry records. This information will be the basis of the PRBS for updating the pensioners’ records and the subsequent deletion of pensioners who are no longer qualified to receive pension benefits.

The report said that in 2011, the PRBS implemented the MOA wherein the names of Integrated National Police (INP) pensioners were submitted to the NSO for cross-matching. As a result, there were 23 pensioners who registered as deceased based on the civil registry records but the pensioners were still included in the pension master list as of August 2011.

Further verification conducted showed that out of the 23 deceased INP pensioners, eight names were encoded/included in the pension payroll several months or years after the retirees’ dates of death, the COA report said.

Although the eight pensioners have no recorded beneficiaries/claimants of retirement benefits based on their pension records, they were included in the master list for two to three years until the PRBS deleted their names from the payroll in September 2011, the report also said.

The PRBS had required the pensioners to update their records and to apply for an identification card (ID), which shall be renewable yearly for purposes of inventory and in order to determine if the pensioners are still living and qualified.

The PRBS, in coordination with the Finance Service Office, temporarily suspended the release of checks to the pensioners who failed to update their status/records with the PRBS.

As a result, 30 pensioners who are surviving spouses of posthumously retired PNP uniformed personnel were initially discovered fake because it was found out that the deceased retirees from whom they derived their pension were also fake.

Also, a total of 898 posthumously retired personnel were found fake due to the absence of records both in the PRBS and the Records Management Division of the Directorate for Personnel and Records Management (RMD, DPRM). The 898 total fake pensioners were immediately deleted from the pension master list in September 2011.

After the deletion, a total of 113 legitimate transferees and survivors reported to the PRBS because the names of the PNP retirees from whom they obtained pension were deleted from the payroll as they were included on the list of fake pensioners.

According to the PRBS, the beneficiaries presented valid retirement documents as proof that the retirees they represent are valid PNP retirees and that they are qualified to receive the monthly pension from the PNP.