A Cebu Pensioner Accuses GSIS In Ombudsman

GSIS members and pensioners queing in a long line before the machine to activate their e-Cards in Kalibo, Aklan.

Dr. Rufina Ponce, for failure of the GSIS to pay her monthly pension, accused the GSIS with the Ombudsman of the Visayas. According to Gerome M. Dalipe IV, Dr. Ponce “lodged her formal compliant with the office of the Ombudsman in the Visayas asking the anti-graft office to look thoroughly into the matter.
Panay News issued on November 28, 2007 published the article of Mr. Dalipe as follows:

Doc To GSIS: Where’s My Pension?
By Gerome M. Dalipe IV

State owned Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) is again under fire for failure to release the pension of a retired doctor for over two months already.
With this, Dr. Rufina Ponce lodged her formal complaint with the Office of the Ombudsman in the Visayas asking the anti-graft office to thoroughly look into the matter.
“Our client, a senior citizen and a devoted public servant, having dedicated the best of her years to public service, deserves better treatment and consideration by GSIS employees,” Ponce said, through the Aumentado, Duallo and Ponce Law Offices.
Ponce is asking the agency to release her pension within three working days. In another letter to GSIS manager Cecilia Gasendo, Ponce recalled how she complied with all the requirements and even secured an electronic card.
“The complainant personally made inquiries but was merely given the cold shoulder by your personnel assigned to handle her case. In sum, she suffered humiliation and pain by the cold and insensitive attitude of petty bureaucrats,” Ponce said in her complaint.
“The complainant, like other retired government employees, ought to be treated with more respect and courtesy due to her having served the best years in her life for our country.”
Ponce said she badly needed her pension to buy medicine for her heart ailment, which is even being “aggravated” by “unwarranted frustrations that (GSIS) has burdened her.”
“Our client is already in her sunset years and with it the ravages of nature for advancing age are omnipresent…and yet you had not seen fit to attend to her simple request of releasing what is justly due to her,” Ponce, through her lawyers, said in the letter to Gasendo. /MP