The Government Service Insurance System is seeking an amendment to its charter so it can manage a proposed new dual pension scheme for uniformed personnel and help stop its fiscal bleeding caused mainly by the ballooning benefit claims of retired military and police officers.
GSIS president and general manager Jesus Clint O. Aranas told the Inquirer that the fund had already submitted a 30-page draft bill seeking a revision of the GSIS charter to some legislators, including House ways and means committee chair and Quirino Rep. Dakila Carlo E. Cua.
If the GSIS will be tasked to supervise uniformed personnel’s pension, as pitched by economic managers, the pension fund’s charter needed to be amended as handling military and police was not within its competencies at present, Aranas explained.
Under the GSIS’s proposal, it will manage only the pension of existing pensioners under a separate system, and will charge management fees once the system is generating income.
As for new entrants, the GSIS will put up a separate insurance fund, which will entail a reorganization at the pension fund.
The GSIS chief maintained that the pension funds for uniformed personnel must be separate and independent from the social insurance fund for civilian government personnel to protect the latter.
The proposed “Revised GSIS Bill” will make it compulsory for new entrants to the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police, the Bureau of Fire Protection, the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, the Philippine Coast Guard, the Bureau of Corrections, and commissioned corps of the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority to become GSIS members.
The GSIS will form a “military and uniformed personnel (MUP) insurance fund,” which will be “contributory in nature and prospective in application” among commissioned and enlisted personnel who are newly appointed, newly commissioned, newly recruited and newly admitted to the service when the bill becomes law.
Since the MUP insurance fund will be managed separately and independently from the social insurance fund and other GSIS-administered funds, a new department, with a distinct accounting system, would be established. —BEN O. DE VERA