Journalist Raissa Robles recounts the horrors of trying to get her senior citizen mother her rightful monthly pension. And they say Pinoys are famous for caring for the elderly? Bull crap.
Faith in our national governance? They can't even get their lousy biometrics to work.
Still, read on. The whole post is
HERE.
GSIS Killed My Mother
By Raissa Robles
Let me tell you how GSIS killed my mother.
Actually, she’s still alive.
But GSIS simply decided she was dead.
Even after I personally brought my mother, Gloria L. Espinosa, on November 5, 2009 to the GSIS office along Quezon Memorial Circle. There, she dutifully sat in front of the biometric machine and the technician tried to re-register her existence not once, not twice, not thrice, not four times, not five times, but
SIX #!*^#!! times.
Finally, the technician told my mother that maybe the skin on her fingers was just too thin for the biometric machine to read.
This did not happen only to my mother. Other elderly pensioners who used the same machine at that time also failed to register. Now I wonder, is that intentional on GSIS’ part? To have a machine that cannot register and read the fingerprints of elderly pensioners?
It was actually the second time my mother, Gloria L. Espinosa, sat in front of a GSIS biometric machine. About a year before that, she had gone to the GSIS main office in Manila. The technician there was also NOT able to get her digital fingerprint.
!!!!#%$^&!!!!! But GSIS obtained her new address and keyed that into its database. That is the proof that my mother actually went to GSIS to register her existence.
Because she again could not be registered on the biometric machine that November 5, 2009, the technician just keyed in my mobile number (for contact purposes) into the machine.
Just to be sure they had a record of my mother’s personal presence, my mother painstakingly filled up a ‘VISITOR’S REQUEST FORM” to tell GSIS she was still alive. I even submitted a photo of her which I took during her October 24, 2009 birthday. When you become a pensioner, be prepared to lose your dignity. You are required by both GSIS and SSS to pose with a newspaper, much like a kidnap victim.
Let me add something for the record. Before I took my mother to GSIS, she gave me her power-of-attorney and I personally went to the GSIS Quezon Memorial office four times to nag them that she was still alive and they should recognize her existence. I went through the process and did not for once try to short-circuit it by invoking the power of the press. (What power?) I was advised to bring my mother and so I did.
Last month at 11:58:10 of September 29,2010 I got this text message from GSIS:
REMINDER: Pls RENEW ACTIVE STATUS AS PENSIONER ON UR BIRTHMONTH 2 ensure uninteruptd receipt of pension Go w/ecard 2 any GSIS Ofc If cmplyd pls disregard Ty”
I must confess, so many unprintable words rushed through my mind upon reading this.
You see, the GSIS Quezon Memorial office told me and my mother last November to have patience since the GSIS computer system was having glitches. We were told GSIS would not be able to encode my mother’s name into their database until early this year.
Ha, ha. They fooled us.
My mother’s troubles began when she went to Canada to visit my sister for several months and she was unable to appear personally in GSIS on her birth month of October.
In February 2005, GSIS simply killed her without notifying her.
Since then, my mother has not received the monthly survivorship pension as the widow of my late father. GSIS Quezon Memorial told us that on April 13, 2008, GSIS prepared a check worth P101,634.85 for my mother but GSIS CANCELLED it because she never came to get it. How could she? They never
!!!!#%$^&!!!!! told her about it.
My mother’s monthly pension is quite small – only P3,504.65 – compared to then GSIS chairman Winston Garcia’s salary and benefits.
But GSIS even tried to cheat my mother my preparing a check for her worth only P101,634.85 for the uncollected pension from March 2005 to March 2008.
Read the rest of the post
HERE.
