Do read this Manila Standard article by Horace T. Templo

The article talks about several interesting bills that are .... shall we say, laying about Congress

Several bills are on increasing retirement pensions ....
   such as those seeking to raise the SSS minimum from  1,200 to 1,300 then to 3,000, and further to 5,000
of course i have my eyebrows on stun (like Spock's, i mean)
nice bills, but like he says also, sort of doomed to linger .....

there is a similar one for the government employees - which is to use the last pay as basis - same as the Armed Forces.  I just want to say that soldiers have more risks than the usual government employee so i dont think that is exactly kosher .....

The plans for the senior citizens ... housing etc... is similar to the US Federal grant for seniors, there is special housing for seniors, but one has to queue for it.  i've seen some of these residences in the US, and the well-run ones are certainly very nice.

i do miss though plans for the disabled, i am of course, one of them.
and i have gone on small rants in this bkig about broken promises from P-Noy about this.
So much for equal opportunity for the disabled  ....  there is not even a tax break for the disabled, there should be - to encourage the disabled to work, and not wait for hand-outs.  i think the disabled should be granted double the exemptions of regular people -

paging P-Noy and his supporters, or has he lost a lot of them already?

Do read  Horace's article to see what i mean

Click here to read HTT's article "most-worthy-pending-bill"

Advanced Birthday Greetings to Horace T. Templo

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday to YOU ......

***

Happy Birthday!

Referring to HTT's post on SSS

 

Solving the trillion-peso SSS problem

click here to read HTT's post on the SSS


i thought you readers might like to take the time to read Horace T. Templo's take on the SSS unfunded liability and contribution increase issue.

Still on the Circular 2013-003: On Age 65 SSS members and over

DISCLAIMER:  I AM NOT A LAWYER NOR A PROCESSOR SO THESE ARE DISCUSSION ITEMS THAT ARE FOR INFO PURPOSES ONLY.

Manila Standard again features this Circular;

Read this post

My lawyer friend told me this.  The SSS Commission CANNOT amend the LAW.  It cannot be greater than Congress.  In this respect, my friend agrees with HTT's statement regarding usurpation of congressional function.    "He said the Social Security law does not impose a deadline on paying contributions and De Quiros cannot change the law by issuing a circular, which is “a usurpation of congressional function.”

Only Congress can limit the benefits, right?


These are the powers of the SSS Commission,  stated in the same law. under Section

"SEC. 4. Powers and Duties of the Commission and SSS. - (a) The Commission. - For the attainment of its main objectives as set forth in Section 2 hereof, the Commission shall have the following powers and duties:

"(1) To adopt, amend and rescind, subject to the approval of the President of the Philippines, such rules and regulations as may be necessary to carry out the provisions and purposes of this Act;

"(2) To establish a provident fund for the members which will consist of voluntary contributions of employers and/or employees, self-employed and voluntary members and their earnings, for the payment of benefits to such members or their beneficiaries, subject to such rules and regulations as it may promulgate and approved by the President of the Philippines;

"(3) To maintain a Provident Fund which consists of contributions made by both the SSS and its officials and employees and their earnings, for the payment of benefits to such officials and employees or their heirs under such terms and conditions as it may prescribe;

"(4) To approve restructuring proposals for the payment of due but unremitted contributions and unpaid loan amortizations under such terms and conditions as it may prescribe;

"(5) To authorize cooperatives registered with the cooperative development authority or associations registered with the appropriate government agency to act as collecting agents of the SSS with respect to their members: Provided, That the SSS shall accredit the cooperative or association: Provided, further, That the persons authorized to collect are bonded;

"(6) To compromise or release, in whole or in part, any interest, penalty or any civil liability to SSS in connection with the investments authorized under Section 26, hereof, under such terms and conditions as it may prescribe and approved by the President of the Philippines; and

"(7) To approve, confirm, pass upon or review any and all actions of the SSS in the proper and necessary exercise of its powers and duties hereinafter enumerated.

More discussions on Circular 2013-003 and the AlkanSSSya program

if you readers are familiar with the Social Security System, Horace T. Templo is the former Chief Actuary and EVP of Operations.

Click here for Horace Templo's discussion of 2 SSS initiatives - Age 65 and over Circular 2013-003 and the AlkanSSSya program

There has been a lot of discussions about this Circular.

i suggest reading the following sections in the SSS Law (RA 8282)

Section 9 on Coverage.
Section 12-B on Retirement Benefits.
Section 13 on Death Benefits.

Let me know your conclusions.

Click here to read the SSS Law (RA8282) and the Sections

It is likely that this circular will be suspended/withdrawn.

Horace Templo's Column on the SSS initiatives: Circular 2013-003 on Age 65 and over and The AlkanSSSya Program

Please read HTT's column today on two hot issues of SSS -  very meaningful discussion from the former Chief Actuary of the Social Security System.



Horace T. Templo's Manila Standard column/post on the new SSS issues: The AlkanSSSya and Age 65 and Up Circular No. 2013-003

On Horace T. Templo's Manila Standard on the Poor

Click here for HTT's column on the poor


How can anyone deny one's poverty?  when all the signs are there ....

HTT's Friday post: Pension comparisons

... he makes public point with points i have been trying to say forever.
there should be the same level of pensions, but even the tinny increase SSS was asking was shot down by Congress and the Senate so ..... will this come to pass?  dont know ,,,,,,,,,

Click here to view HTT's discussion on the private and public sector

HTT's Friday post on Manila Standard

He leads off the discussion by way of the April 9 holiday.  This holiday used to be called the fall of Bataan, and this has been changed to Araw ng Kagitingan....

My father was in the PMA, and if i may say so, quite the handsome fella.  Women "crushed" over him.... my uncle, Mapagtapat or Tito Ping was in the PMA too and he said, time-and-time again, that my Dad was more handsome than him.  anyways, i think the statement true but yes, both of them were in Bataan.  And they both were in the Death March.  From both their stories, Tito Ping fell ill - so my Dad couldnt escape as he had to take care  of his brother, Capaz  - and the Death March.  How thin Dad was in his pics then.

Dad wasnt talkative, but war is hell indeed.

HTT segues the discussion of the war then into the war of poverty now.  then as now,  war is hell....
read his points.

Click here for HTT's post on surrendering=the-war-against-poverty


rights. tell me, do you know your rightss?

HTT's 22 March post

Ah, pensions.
i dont know enough of the clergy rules to know if all those in the clergy, priests, brothers, and nuns have social security.  i do know that some of them pay social security out of the parish collection, and this is of course known by the parish council.  i dont know what happens for the secular order.  The pope, of course, belongs to the monastic order, and is of course provided with a pension. 

Do you read Robert Ludlum?  You might remember Matt Damon portraying Jason Bourne. Ludlum wrote about the pope in The Road to Gandolfo.  BUT i digress.

HTT talks about the calvary of getting your benefits, especially pensions in this time of ACOP.  Surely there must be an easier way - like GSIS, or perhaps SSS utilizing the barangay - this may not be easy also.

Perhaps it is time for a fresh look at procedures and an even fresher look at the front line personnel - those who directly transact with members.... Perhaps.  Members do not always complain to SSS.  They grin and bear it.

but read HTT's words, not just my meandering comments ...

Manila Standard - 2013/03/22- A Certain tenderness in pension administration

Reaction to HTT's post last Friday

A long time ago, perhaps not in this blog, i had mentioned that unless individuals were investment-inclined,  they dont bother to really provide for their future, except perhaps to purchase an insurance policy - the just-in-case-scenario of the event of death.   However, it is not always just death that may bring disaster to a family.  Loss of income due to contingencies of many flavors have a higher probability of occurring.  Accidents may disable a person, thereby causing him to lose a major source of his  income.

Hence, i have been antsy about PERA, but no more... i think i may just fall under the not-eligible due to the long wait.  *hay*  the wheels of justice grind very slow indeed!

anyway, ofws have been romanced into paying their contributions as well as paying into a flexi-account.  How nice, and yet, as HTT points out, very few OFWs actually do that note and i dont understand why.

click below to read how advantaged and fully privileged these OFWs are .....
HTT's post on The Manila Standard Today /2013/02/22/ the-plight-of-migrant-workers/

HTT's post on Hiring the Retired, Manila Standard Today 08 Feb 2013

very interesting post of HTT today.
he gets no arguments from me

may i urge you to read it

the title reflects his discussion

Click here for the full post of HTT on hiring-the-retired

Reaction on HTT's 18 Jan 2013 Manila Standard column

i encourage readers of my blog to particularly read this post of Horace Templo.  He explains the different laws that messed-up, confused, and hassled the pensions then, and now.  makes for a good historical basis (and the FUs that occurred then, and now).  There should be a way of having similar pensions, or at least livable pensions.

Click here to read HTT's column on ManilaStandard on "Leveling-the-pension-playing-field"

HTT's Manila Standard Post on "Forced into Poverty"

HTT's post on catastrophes and how people already living in poverty are thrust into even greater poverty, if there is such a term.  poverty is poverty, and there can be no more greater poverty than what is currently being experienced. Poverty has forced them into becoming non-contributing to any pension plan, living in a day-to-day hand-to-mouth existence.  Thus, when their fruitful labor times have passed, they have no fallback positions at all.

In the same post, HTT discusses the recent forced ranking imposed by the GCGG and the DBM.  He said, and i quote:

The “forced ranking” method is an example. Jack Welch of General Electric popularized it using a 20-70-10 percent forced distribution. Done well, it rewards generously the most productive 20 percent and identifies from the bottom 10 percent the undesirables who must be weeded out. Implemented improperly, it brings down employee morale and results in quick employee turn-overs. It promotes individualism but erodes teamwork.


But it was required by the Governance Commission for Government-Owned or Controlled Corporations and the Department of Budget and Management as the basis for the grant of a performance-based bonus to all government employees in 2012.

All employees had to be ranked from highest to lowest.  They were then forced into a 10-60-20-10 percent grouping distribution and categorized as having “Exceeded Expectations (Best)”, “Met All Expectations (Better)”, “Met Most Expectations (Good)” and for performing “Below Expectations (Below Satisfactory)”.

For those employed by profitable corporations, the “Best” were entitled to a bonus of 2.5 times their salary, the “Better” 1.5 times, and the “Good” 1.25 times. By design, 10 percent of 1.4 million public servants were to get nothing.

For those who were ranked high enough, the bonus was released just in time for Christmas expenditures, and much appreciated by their ecstatic dependents.

But for those who honestly toiled in the bureaucracy but still ended up in the bottom 10 percent it was a calamity before Christmastime. They may have met their work targets and thought that they have earned their bonus but nobody told them that others who performed better would instead get it.
They performed tasks of the highest quality of service, the type that endears government to our people. Their outputs, non-quantifiable perhaps, supported the performances of the team’s “Best”. Unfortunately, their supervisors had to put names in the bottom of the performance list.

Now they worry being labeled as a “Below Satisfactory” performer, dreading dismissal, which is the companion of the forced ranking method. After all, it is also called the “rank-and-yank” evaluation system. Does the government have the guts to yank out these 140,000 workers and force them into poverty?

i thanked HTT for tackling one of the more difficult topics - but it was short.

Click here to read in full the manilastandardtoday "forced-into-poverty" article

Reaction to HTT's Friday post on increasing the SSS pension

Click here to read HTT's pension-adjustments-in-2013/

no arguments on this one.  i do believe the current generation always pays for the sins of the previous...
remember the sins of the father????

also true for pensions.  our dear president must indeed bite the bullet, and approve.  they bit the bullet for the RH bill, didnt they?  although one of my dear friends have said it also involved big business.....*shrugs*
for me, like i mentioned in an earlier separate post, it is about choices, and the way we involve the God one believes in those choices.  sometimes it seems there are no choices...... 

but pensions. they do need to be adjusted. i just hope that when it is my turn to get my pension, they will be favorably adjusted as well.  in fact, the president of the SSS. Emilio S. de Quiros, brother of columnist Conrado de Quiros only proposed a 20K MSC limit (it is currently at 15K).  i always thought it should be at a minimum of 30K.  i prefer 50K but no one is listening to me on that point. The Actuarial people will object,  most assiduously.  can you imagine how much furor (not Fuhrer) that will raise?  *sigh*

on the other side of the coin.  i encourage people to contribute - and at higher levels.  Higher levels mean higher pensions - and todays limits are just the pits.  too low - in my personal opinion.  really too low. and your pension - SSS that is, will be about 40% of the just the pits MSC.

i encourage entrepreneurship.  knit! crochet! sell this abroad!  People need to have some retirement plan unless you are very financially savvy, it would be hard to survive on the SSS pension alone, and if you dont have any, welllllllll ..... it would even be harder, unless you are a GSIS pensioner with their no limit MSC, or if Daddy (or Mommy, for that mater) has oodles of money like Unca Scrooge of the Disney Ducks.

so pay your contributions, and dont complain too much about the increase. it will be in your favor when it is time for you to quit working ..... 

So, whatever happened to the PERA?  i keep waiting for HTT to tackle it but he says the time isnt ripe yet....

Late reaction to HTT's post on Rizal, and the RH bill, and the Church

Click here for HTT's Rizals-Noli-characters-today

I remember being required to read the Noli Me Tangere and the El Filibusterismo at Sayans.  

If i remember right, our teacher was Mrs. Alfonso and we were supposed to read it in Pilipino, Mrs. Alfonso being the Filipino teacher in .... my first year. i was in Neptune and Mrs. Evaline Gerochi was our adviser.

i have not read both novels in its original form - Spanish.  i basically read the English version. Yes, i know - we were supposed to read it in Pilipino but if i had read it in Pilipino, it would have taken 3x as long to finish it as reading the English version and i figured, both were translations anyway.  It was the culture at the time, in grade school i was class monitor and a class monitor, if you didnt know it, was required to report classmates who spoke Pilipino.  it was an assigned thing, so i remember speaking Pilipino with another class monitor, as we would not report each other.  but i digress.

Padre Damaso. My dear male classmates  would snicker (do adult males still snicker the way they do in high school?) in recall of the person they associate with Damaso.  Damaso was a DOM although like Padre Salvi, he once was a young man.  And those Padres were certainly lusty ones, and rapists practically.

Rizal's portrayal of the Church was decadent and evil, a case of power corrupts and absolute power corrupts completely.

i am Catholic.  i practice my faith and live it as joyously as i can.  i have never believed that as an institution that it was perfect.  God is perfect but his servants are not although some come perilously close to it.  Man is fallible, God is not.  

HTT talks about the Church and its errors.  one of the errors, he states is that the Church tried to kill off the mandatory Rizal subject in high school and if the Church had been successful, the Filipino people would have been deprived of the knowledge that Rizal had tried to impart with his writings.  He repeats the thought in the recent RH bill voting and how the Church condemns its passing into law.

I have very good friends who stand fast in opposing views.  Diane and Kay, real sisters in the flesh and not just in spirit are both against the RH bill.  Just as steadfast are Amihan and Alice in the opposing stand.  and i?  i believe in choices - for as long as these are choices freely made - not stuffed down one's throat.  

Amihan's work deals with abused children.  she has seen directly what unwanted children can be forced to experience, to be sold for pleasure at a tender age.  she has seen wives get beaten is they do not lie with their husbands who take zero precautions and are macho in their prolific creation of children they do not support.  i would rather that these women not have to bear the burden of more children in addition to the lusty rampages of their erstwhile husbands.

so yes, you could say i am not against the RH bill.  my friend Dale reminds me that her objection is the big business that will be generated by the bill - as clinics hand anti-reproduction materials willy-nilly.

but i say - to each his own conscience.  and i hate censorship - in all its forms.

Am I my brother's keeper?

HTT starts his column with these words from the Bible...  i guess you all know who in the bible said this, right?  see the end of this post if you cannot remember

Click here for HTT's post in today's Manila Standard

indeed.  it would be nice if everyone could say yes to this question.  however, that is in a perfect world, and end-of-the-world today not withstanding, the world isnt perfect, far from it - and therefore, many people prefer to leave it to someone else to worry about.  few of us take the time to actually be our brother's keeper..

HTT says it is DSWD that has been assigned the job, with no objections from everyone.

we leave it to the government - DSWD, more properly to handle all of that - and more.  After all, that is part of the reason we all pay exorbitant taxes, isnt it?  It is for the government to take care of things most of us prefer not to be bothered with......

DSWD has a big challenge to meet and i hope they will meet it.




************
Cain said it, when asked about Abel.  You do remember what happened to his brother Abel?
 

It's Friday, so reaction to HTTemplo's Playing Santa Claus column

first of all, HTT's post invariably contains SSS history so reading it is a good way to get historical data about the SSS unless you - as a reader - are one of those - who are steeped in history.  i would say that legislators should know about the SSS history themselves (or as some politician would put, as least his aides should)  because SSS matters are of national importance. 

what can i say?  i agree.  in fact, readers may remember i said that 20K increase mentioned in the SSS reform agenda is too small.  i said then that it should be at 50K, or at the very least 30K.  But, they chose to limit it at 20K.

will PNoy play Santa then?  i guess.  perhaps history will dictate it

let me just repeat his last statement

Thus, it should do no less for its primary program-pensions. Election year or not, it should push for increases in pensions, maximum salary credit and contribution rate. This Christmas, it is the turn of President Noynoy Aquino to play Santa Claus to us current and future pensioners by approving them.

click here to read HTTemplo's column playing-santa-claus

Reaction to HTT's Friday column on a retirement town

a tad late in publishing this.  what did i do last Friday?  hmmm.... oh, i went to Manila for healing and Saturday i did the Christmas grocery shopping and that pained my leg so much, i was down for the count Sunday.

anyway, here goes.

i have never been to Sipocot, Camarines Sur.  so it was good to read about it.  too bad there werent any pictures....

there is something to be said about retirement places and retirement homes.  as HT remarked, retirement places are places where it is relatively inexpensive to live (and be merry?) but it should also have the creature comforts that one expects to have.  So if your life depends on an internet connection, you cannot retire in a place where the connection is spotty.  Or if you need to be near a physician or a hospital, make sure you retire in a community that offers the expertise you need.

one of the points he made had to be with spending more to benefit more - like the 20% and vat-free discounts.  well, seniors who are sick, or need maintenance medications benefit from this provision.  Imagine being old, needing meds, and being charged normal prices!  so, it is not just for good times, no - not at all, but also those that need support.  As for good times, everyone needs some good times, right? 

as for increasing contributions, i agree with him when he says that today's workers must pay for pension adjustments just as one day, future workers will pay for future pensions -- that is, pensions from today's workers.  

as for the reform agenda, i even think it is lacking ... in parts. 

in fact, in an earlier post,  i said the adjustments were low.  i think the maximum salary credit should be higher.  how else can future pensions be meaningful?

Click here for HTT's column re: in-search-of-a-retirement-town

Comments on HTT's Friday column on Retire-the-SSS-Loan Program

wasnt able to post this last Friday or the weekend because i had a bit of a to-do last Friday, which carried over my weekend.  anyways, here it is.

HTT proposes to retire the sss loan program. The basis being that it is a difficult program to administer,  with too many members not paying, thinking they would just wait for the loan to be deducted from their retirement benefits, forgetting that the interest and penalties will continue.  

*sigh*  if only people will pay. still since the first condonation, people think SSS will keep condoning the loans.  I think SSS will NOT. not anymore. so, if people will pay, and pay regularly, then SSS need not retire this option.   some people need money quick, and SSS does grant loans quickly - for good payers.

i for one, want SSS to continue giving out loans.  sometimes, people need money now, and cant wait for retirement.

Click here to read HTT's column on Retire-the-sss-loan-program