Ghost pensioners gyp veterans office of P4.2b

By Macon Ramos-Araneta | Posted on September 13, 2012 |

 

 

The Philippine Veterans Affairs Office paid at least P4.2 billion a year for several years to “ghost” pensioners, but it would have lost more money if it hadn’t purged its roster of pensioners, Senator Franklin Drilon said Wednesday.
He said the government used to earmark P15 billion a year to pay the pensions of its war veterans, but that went down to P10.59 billion in 2010 after the Veterans Office cleaned up its roster of fake pensioners and those who had died. “The difference of about P4.2 billion saved on a yearly basis is made possible with the effort of PVAO to flesh out the fraudulent claims. Meaning, before the reforms, this P4.2 billion would be paid to non-existing veterans or fictitious claimants,” Drilon said.
“This has been corrected by shifting to the bank system, by having the pension paid through the banks instead of using the old system where pensioners get their benefits through checks and the postal service.”
Drilon made his statement even as the Budget Department said it would be pressing criminal charges against the people behind the Education Department’s failure to remit its employees’ premiums to the Government Service Insurance System.
In a statement, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said President Benigno Aquino III had ordered the Education Department to sue the people who did not remit P6.92 billion in premiums to the pension fund from July 1997 up to this year.
“President Aquino has directed us to work closely with the GSIS and [the Education Department] to restore the full GSIS benefits of all affected [Education Department] personnel,” Abad said.
On Tuesday, the Budget Department, the Education Department and the GSIS signed a deal whereby the Budget Department committed to shoulder the unremitted GSIS benefits of 784,602 Education Department workers.
The GSIS will condone P14.04 billion in interest due the amount and grant a 5-percent discount on the principal amount.
At Tuesday’s Senate hearing on the proposed P120.32-budget of the Defense Department for 2013, Veterans Affairs Administrator Ernesto Carolina said that, by simply disbursing the veterans’ pensions from the postal system to the banking system, the government saved around P4.2 billion.(END)