Unpaid Pension Premiums Piling Up 

By Roy Pelovello, Manila Standard Today 

October 15, 2008

Philippines

Moves are gaining steam in the House to impose a penalty on agencies or state officials who fail to remit their employees’ pension premium contributions to the Government Service Insurance System. 

House Majority Leader Arthur Defensor initiated the move by filing a bill for this purpose. 

Defensor cited documents from the Congressional Planning and Budget Department which indicated that as of December 2006, a total of P4.2 billion in GSIS premiums of government employees remained unpaid. 

Many public servants cannot make use of loans from the GSIS or enjoy pension benefits because their offices failed to remit their contributions, Defensor said. 

“There is a need for remedial legislation. There is really a need for us to penalize [those who will not remit GSIS contributions],” Defensor said. 

Admitting that he was a victim of such irregularity during his early days as a government employee, Defensor said there ought to be a law against non-remittance of GSIS premiums. 

“They have to be subjected to penal sanctions if they refuse or fail to pay the premiums. We can probably come up with a penal statute [on this],” Defensor said. 

According to the department’s report, the bulk of the unpaid GSIS premiums came from the executive branch, with a total of P4.08 billion. 

Among the agencies under the executive department, the Education Department has the biggest amount of unpaid premium with P2.8 billion, followed by the Budget Department with P906.752 million. 

The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao had P199 million in unpaid GSIS premium. 

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