GSIS staff delaying release of burial benefit

I and my wife, Loreto (Loring) Parayno Diolazo, are both retired employees of the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital. My wife was confined at the Asian Hospital and Medical Center, Muntinlupa City, and died on Sept. 9, 2011.

On Dec. 21, 2011, I filed my claim to her burial benefit with the Government Service Insurance System. I was attended to by Dina B.H. Varias. I submitted to her my postal ID and my wife’s death certificate duly certified by the National Statistics Office. I didn’t complete the required submissions because the GSIS has, after all, duplicate copies of the records of every government employee/retiree. Besides, I told her, I’m also retired. Then she asked me to sign the burial benefit claim and handed me the reference slip.

I wonder why up to now the GSIS has not released my claim. Something wrong must be going on here. GSIS employees should remember that their salaries come from GSIS members.

So, may I call the attention of GSIS president Robert Vergara for him to take action against those who “take pleasure” in withholding or delaying the release of burial benefits.

Sad to say, since July 1986 until my retirement, I was the designated UP-PGH representative to the cashier’s office of GSIS branches in Quezon City and Makati City. As such, one of my functions was to ensure the delivery of UP-PGH’s monthly remittance checks to those branches. My service record, a copy of which the GSIS has, is enough certification that I’m not a fake claimant.

—VICENTE B. DIOLAZO,

116 Genaro St., Lakeview Homes,

Barangay Putatan, Muntinlupa City