This refers to the news item “GSIS winds down home lending plan.’’ (Inquirer, 11/15/11)
Kudos to the Government Service Insurance System! After winding down its internal shelter financing program, the new GSIS management has signed with the Home Development Mutual Fund or Pag-Ibig Fund a credit facility agreement wherein the pension fund is providing an initial allocation of P5 billion to finance its members’ housing loans. The credit agreement and the reported GSIS request for Pag-Ibig Fund to put up a special processing lane for its members and pensioners applying for housing loans mean that the GSIS did not totally give up its 50-year-old housing program. In effect, the program continues through a partnership with the Pag-Ibig Fund which has proven its expertise in home-lending. It may be recalled that earlier, the GSIS had to suspend the program because of its lackluster performance, besides the fact that it is duplicating the function of the Pag-Ibig Fund.
The relegation of the GSIS home-financing function to the Pag-Ibig Fund allowed the pension fund to focus on other types of loans it could offer to its members and pensioners. No doubt, the measure is one of the pagbabago (changes) GSIS president and general manager Robert Vergara was referring to when he apprised his fellow Cabanatueños, during his homecoming visit to Cabanatuan City early this year—that the new GSIS management was undertaking pagbabago in the hitherto scandal-rocked and inefficient pension fund—to put the agency on the right track.
Coming at no other opportune time, the new GSIS management’s pagbabago-initiatives have thus far resulted in a leaner but efficient workforce and quality-handling of the pension fund. Gone are the shady and hanky-panky deals and investments, fat allowances and other handsome perks, and the procurement of unnecessary expensive paintings which, during the preceding administration, badly shook the agency’s financial stability. More importantly, these brought about improved services to its about 1.8 million members and pensioners.
—PRUDENCIO E. MAGPAYO,
freelance journalist,
MS Garcia, Cabanatuan City