OCA Circular No. 46-04

March 23, 2004

OCA CIRCULAR NO. 46-04

TO	:	All Concerned Officials and Personnel of the Regional Trial Courts, Metropolitan Trial Courts, Municipal Trial Courts in Cities, Municipal Circuit Trial Courts, Municipal Trial Courts, Shari'a District Courts and the Shari'a Circuit Courts

SUBJECT	:	Updating of Membership Premiums and Loan Payments as Required by the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS)

Lower Court officials and employees forwarded to the Office of the Court Administrator letters sent by Mr. Winston F. Garcia, President and General Manager, Government Service Insurance System, requiring that they furnish the System with, among others, copies of remittance lists together with the corresponding GSIS official receipts duly certified by the agency's authorized Financial Officer. They even supplied the members of the status of their membership as well as their premium contributions and loan account balances.

As justified, the required documents will help the members in reconciling their records with that of the GSIS. It will also be used in adjusting the creditable years of service, premium contributions and loan repayment records, etc.

The data as presented by the GSIS are incomplete. It appears that the Office is not remitting to the System the amount deducted from the salaries of court personnel. There are even insinuations that the unremitted amount is being used for some other purposes.

The Financial Management Office, Office of the Court Administrator, has vouched that the Office has been religiously remitting to the GSIS the premium contributions and the loan payments deducted from the salaries of court officials and personnel. They have the file copies of all official receipts issued by the GSIS as acknowledgment of the monthly remittances made to the System.

In the flyer ("Toward a Reformed GSIS ") which the GSIS had distributed, they admitted that:

"the GSIS premium and loan data were at least 30% reliable. Premium payments and loan repayments were not being posted for the last 10 or more years of GSIS operations. " (emphasis supplied) AcICTS

The Office of the Court Administrator submitted, as early as 30 September 2003, the diskette containing data of GSIS premium contributions for Supreme Court and Lower Courts covering the period from January 1997 to December 2001. Said diskette was not utilized because, as reasoned out, the computer format of the Supreme Court does not jibe with their program.

The Management Information Systems Office (MISO) of the Supreme Court again submitted on January 2004 the Remittance Data Files containing all the remittances due to the GSIS which were deducted from the salaries of lower courts' officials and employees covering the period from January 1997 to December 2003 in the file format specified in the GSIS Electronic File Exchange Project.

It is therefore advised that the Office of the Court Administrator had done its part of furnishing the Government Service Insurance System of the required remittance lists covering the period from January 1997 to December 2003 for all Lower Court officials and employees.

Please be guided accordingly.

(SGD.) PRESBITERO J. VELASCO, JR.
Court Administrator