The Government Service Insurance System in Dumaguete City has not encountered any case of fake survivor pensioners because it has taken measures such as the E-card enrolment and the yearly survey on survivorship, to prevent this, Jaydon Villaverde of the GSIS Information Office said.

The E-card enrolment controls the disbursement of benefits by suspending pensions until pensioners get their E-cards, while the survivorship survey verifies and updates pensioner records, he said.

Recently, the national GSIS suspended temporarily monthly benefits of around 20,000 questionable claimants-pensioners due to the failure of remarried survivors to inform the GSIS of their new status, and the follow-up on the coming of age of minors receiving pensions. The GSIS is continually updating the databases to clean these records, he said.

Meanwhile, general manager and president of GSIS Winston Garcia had informed its members that by next month, it will start upgrading the old e-cards with the new e-card plus, which has a microchip that stores all the data including GSIS member fingerprints.

GSIS members in the islands of Camiguin, Coron, Romblon and Siquijor already have their e-card plus as they were among the first in the country to own what is called a smart card.

Garcia assured the Regional Development Council that with this G-W@PS all transactions will no longer be measured in weeks and months but in seconds and minutes. More significantly, the GW@PS is paperless, with the secure biometrics feature of e-card plus and the wireless kiosk, and can now check records of the member, apply for policy, cash advance, emergency, salary loans and maturity without filling up a single document via the internet, Garcia said.*JG

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