Recto bill favors GSIS members

Sen. Ralph Recto. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Sen. Ralph Recto has proposed a measure that would impose two-percent interest for every month the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) fails to release retirement benefits due a member.

This and other entitlements are contained in Recto’s Senate Bill No. 254 which seeks to introduce a “Bill of Rights of Members” in Republic Act No. 8291, otherwise known as the GSIS Charter.

“The penalty would keep the GSIS on its toes and ever vigilant to the primacy of timely delivery of benefits and claims,” Recto said in a statement on the weekend.

The measure would also set a limit of five percent on GSIS funds that may be invested abroad to shield the pension fund from global financial upheavals and channel more funds to domestic investment.

“With these rights, no member of the GSIS will sail into the sunset feeling bitter, empty and shortchanged by the same agency that they helped keep afloat with their monthly contributions,” Recto said.

If his bill is enacted into law, said Recto, any official or unit of the GSIS that flouted the rights of its members would face legal and administrative sanctions.

The bill grants the regional trial courts jurisdiction over disputes arising from the grant of benefits.

This would give the GSIS’s approximately 1.68 million members an alternative venue to appeal decisions on their claims aside from the GSIS itself.

The current GSIS charter does not have a Bill of Rights of Members.

Recto said he filed the bill in response to complaints from public school teachers and other members of the state-run pension fund.

Under his measure, all GSIS members will also be granted the right to courteous and responsive service; right to information; right to expeditious processing of claims; right to be heard, and special rights for the elderly.—Norman Bordadora