Teachers launch movement to get P21 B from GSIS

MANILA, Philippines – The Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC), a group of public school teachers, has started a movement to get the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) to refund the P21 billion that was allegedly deducted illegally from active and retired teachers’ salaries over the years.

Melchor Cayabyab, TDC secretary-general, said they have launched their “GSIS Refund Movement” to demand reimbursement of the accumulated billions of pesos the state workers’ fund had wrongly and illegally deducted from the wages of teachers because of errors and deficiencies in their system.

Cayabyab said that the estimated amount of the over-deductions on active and retired teachers had grown into billions, factoring in also the amount deducted from retirees.

“Because of problems in the GSIS and the Department of Education’s records system, billions have been deducted from active and retired public school teachers over a period of several years despite continued calls from teachers to fix their system. This plunder has now ballooned to a total of P21 billion,” Cayabyab said.

He said the over-deductions done by the GSIS effectively penalized the public school teachers for the errors in their records system.

“Public school teachers should not be punished with over-deductions because of the GSIS and DepEd’s mistakes,” Cayabyab said.  – Rainier Allan Ronda