DURING their en banc meeting on July 25, the Social Security System (SSS) commissioners unanimously passed a resolution reassigning to the Marawi City and Ormoc City calamity victims a substantial amount of the budget for the 60th nationwide anniversary celebration of the creation of the SSS scheduled in September of this year.
SSS Chairman Amado D. Valdez instructed that a small portion of the anniversary budget, as previously arranged, should largely go to sports activities that would promote camaraderie among SSS employees.
The near-scrapping of the anniversary celebration, which already passed the planning stage, was a big letdown to management, which has spent time and effort in conceptualizing an appropriate anniversary celebration program and to SSS employees who have been expecting a festive respite from their daily grind of hard work patiently entertaining and laboriously processing claims of thousands of private-sector
employees.
The commissioners, however, predicted that the SSS management and employees will understand the rationale in redirecting the anniversary budget, which is principally to lend some measure of timely and meaningful empathy and support to the Marawi City and Ormoc City victims whose very physical survival depends on a pouring of voluntary financial assistance from every nook and cranny of the universe, more so, from their countrymen.
Moreover, the commissioners’ action partakes of a sensitive response to President Duterte’s recent State of the Nation Address calling for aid to the Marawi City victims.
Furthermore, the commissioners think that a nationwide celebration, where naturally there will erupt some festivities, no matter how subdued, could be misinterpreted as failing to consider or ignoring the current sufferings of our brothers and sisters in Marawi and Ormoc, particularly the grieving families orphaned by our dead soldiers and civilians.
It will be recalled that only last month, the SSS, through the commissioners, donated half-a-million pesos to the Red Cross chaired by Sen. Richard J. Gordon, the great Filipino humanitarian, as their share in helping the families of soldiers who unfortunately died or got wounded in the ongoing Marawi City battle.
This is not to say that the SSS is bloated with surplus funds such that it is in a position to be charitable and to donate to any worthy cause. Like other government-controlled corporations, the SSS has been embarking on austerity and collection- efficiency programs to maintain the stability of its well-guarded funds. The present commissioners have always been careful to disapprove unnecessary expenses, untested areas in investments and to approve only investment proposals that have undergone thorough study by the agency’s own group of expert investment managers.
One area of its operations that the commission is giving focus on is its coverage and collection endeavors. Coverage and collection during the past administrations have been anemic and lackluster such that membership had remained stagnant at 30 or so million members and such that millions of unremitted delinquent accounts remain uncollected.
The SSS is fortunate to have Commissioner Gonzalo T. Duque of the famous Pangasinan Duque clan to head the commission’s Committee on Coverage, Collection and Related Matters. As a desperate measure to run after delinquent employers, Duque conceptualized the Warrant of Distraint Levy and Garnishment. Through this legal strategy, the SSS will immediately secure the warrant upon its filing of a collection of delinquent account complaint in court or with the SSS Commission. That way, its collection efforts would not be delayed by legal maneuverings of the respondents.
Another problem that Duque and the commissioners are now trying to address is the failure of the SSS’s collecting banks to remit immediately the premiums they have collected from employers and employees on behalf of the SSS. This problem has been causing the SSS some financial headaches. While one commissioner has seriously recommended to picket the erring banks until they remit the amounts collected, another commissioner has proposed to bring the matter to the courts. The SSS chairman and SSS president, however, showing sober leadership, believing that some workable and just solution to the problem will soon unravel, want the few ballistic commissioners to, in the meantime, cool down.