Are very low SSS pensions moral?

The present officials of the Social Security System defended the millions of pesos in performance bonus they gave themselves as moral. In addition to the bonus, they also got hefty directors’ fees and dividends from other corporations. The excessive benefits received by their predecessors were ordered returned, but to date nobody has complied. The irony of it is that the SSS executives are not SSS members; they are GSIS members.

Poor SSS pensioners whose monthly pensions have remained unchanged for many years. I remember President Joseph Estrada was the last to grant a 10-percent increase in SSS pensions. There is an existing law mandating periodic reviews of the pensions received in relation to the cost of living. Unfortunately this has not been done.

The SSS is raising the members’ monthly contributions by 0.6-percent and the monthly pension by 5 percent. What can one buy with the 5-percent pension increase based on a small base amount?

I cannot help but mention here my experience with the SSS. I have been a member of the SSS since it started operations on Sept. 1, 1957, and through those years have had several employers. Thirty years after, in 1987, I submitted to the SSS the required papers for my claim to a retirement pension. My contributions to the SSS were continuous for 30 years, under several employers. You won’t believe it, the SSS computed my monthly pension at P400. I had to ask my cousin Dr. Emanuel V. Soriano, presidential security adviser to President Cory, for help with then SSS president and CEO Jose Cuisia Jr. to please adjust my pension. Cuisia increased my P400 monthly pension to P800 (double).

So we pensioners are asking in unison: When will our pensions be “considered moral” like those of the SSS executives?

—BERNARDO V. PERALTA, CPA and retired accounting professor, Cebu City