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THE 94
member-organizations of the Philippine Insurer and
Reinsurers’ Association (Pira) vowed on Tuesday to take
its fight all the way to the Supreme Court to retain
control of the lucrative Compulsory Third-Party
Liability insurance, or CTPL, business.
Much to
Pira’s dismay, the state-owned Government Service
Insurance System (GSIS) has been awarded the business by
the Department of Transportation and Communications.
Pira
wants the Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Makati to
reconsider its decision dismissing the former’s bid to
bar the GSIS from acting as agent or broker on the
multibillion-peso CTPL business.
“We will
take this fight all the way to the Supreme Court if
necessary,” Pira chairman Honorio Ramajo said at a
public forum on Tuesday.
Pira
lawyer Jose Roy Jr. told reporters they have an
unlimited number of legal options they mean to throw
against the GSIS to retain control over a business that
nets P3.5 billion a year.
“This is
a fight for survival. The government just cannot take
away a purely private business enterprise and award it
as a monopoly [to] the GSIS,” Roy said.
Both
stressed that awarding the CTPL business to the GSIS
would mean job losses for more than 60,000 vehicle
insurance agents who earn commissions aggregating P500
million a year.
Ramajo
particularly pointed out that Section 387 of the
Insurance Code bars the GSIS from acting as agent and
broker for the Land Transportation Office.
He said
this was their main concern in filing the complaint at
the Makati RTC against the GSIS after the lower court
dismissed their complaint on a technicality.
Ramano
said the GSIS takeover of the CTPL business was an
“intervention in a purely private affair by a government
entity.”
“They
should leave us by ourselves,” Pira trustee Melencio
Mallilin also said. |
