Give old-age pensioners a break

GOVERNMENT RETIREES, under a new scheme for their revalidation as GSIS pensioners, are required to accomplish GSIS and Union Bank forms to be personally submitted to the nearest GSIS satellite office. It is, however, ridiculous that pensioners, most of whom are already in the twilight years of their lives, have to indicate the names of their fathers and mothers, dead or alive, which for all intents and purposes do not have any bearing at all with the old-age pensions.

This reminds me of an incident some years back when pensioners were required to go to a GSIS branch office—in my case the Naga City branch—to accomplish forms in connection with the issuance of the eCards. A lady employee, upon scrutinizing my papers, asked me the birth dates of my father (who passed away in 1931) and my mother (who died in 1980).

However, she indicated in the prescribed form my father’s birthday as 1888, to which I could not attest since he died when I was 3 years old.
We pensioners, due to old age, are often hard put recalling dates due to memory lapses; hence, we can’t be sure if those indicated in the prescribed forms would be true and correct.

In a related development, the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO) informed its pensioners, in a notice sent through their depository banks, that the AFP Finance Center Mobile Team is conducting a “revalidation” on March 15, 2011 at the Canimog Hotel, Daet, Camarines Norte, and that for this purpose AFP retirees should bring with them (a) duly accomplished PUF with 2×2 ID picture; (b) retirement order; (c) photocopy of NSO-issued marriage contract; and (d) photocopy of pensioner’s ID (back to back); for the beneficiaries: (a) duly accomplished PUF with 2×2 ID picture; (b) retirement order or posthumous retirement order; (c) photocopy of the Declaration of Legal Beneficiaries from JAGO, AFP; and (d) photocopy of NSO-issued marriage contract (for widows), and (e) for guardians, an NSO-issued birth certificate of a veteran’s children.

The purpose of the revalidation may be good, but how will the bedridden GSIS or AFP pensioners be able to present themselves in person? Will the GSIS or AFP representatives go to the residences of these AFP retirees to accomplish this very important undertaking? Being a GSIS pensioner (I am a retired city treasurer) and World War II veteran, I feel very much for the bedridden old-age pensioners.

—GODOFREDO O. PETEZA,
district commander,
Camarines Norte Veterans District-Region 5,
Veterans Federation
of the Philippines