Let me say that I most strongly object to the performance bonuses that the SSS Board has authorized for itself.  My basis for objecting is my personal experience dealing with the SSS.

I have a client whose husband was a SSS pensioner. He died in 2009.  When his wife (my client) applied for the death benefit as her husband’s primary legal beneficiary, her claim was denied.

According to the SSS, there was another person who was declared by the pensioner as his legal wife.  When the records were unearthed (after six months, and after shuffling my client from the SSS Meycauayan office to the SSS Malolos Processing Center and then to the Clustered Processing Center in Tarlac), it was revealed that yes, the pensioner had declared another woman as his wife.

It was also revealed that after only a few months, the pensioner asked that the designation of the beneficiary be revoked as it was a ‘clerical error’ on the part of the personnel at their office.  The pensioner had intended to declare as his beneficiary his sister who was the only minor among his siblings. The personnel at his employer’s office made a mistake. Two years later, he asked that his legal wife (my client) be designated as his beneficiary.  Years later, his two children with his legal wife were added as beneficiaries.

I can accept that there is a need for my client to prove that she has a superior right to receive the pension from her husband.  We did exactly that.  Thinking that if I made my petition as succinct and as concrete and organized as I could with all the evidence that they could possibly need placed at their fingertips, the case would then be resolved earlier, I was gravely mistaken.

The petition was filed sometime in February 2010.and we did not have a hearing until October 2010. After that, the case was submitted for resolution. The resolution was not issued until July 2013.  Yes, two years and nine months after the case was submitted for resolution, it was finally decided.

Please note that the SS Commission only decides cases en banc.  This means that those members of the governing board of the SSS are also those who decide the decisions before the SS Commission.  Given that they took 2 years and nine  months to decide one simple case with all the issues joined and the SSS itself did not present any contradictory evidence nor did it object to any of the evidence thus presented by my client, this was virtually ex parte!  And yet it took the SS Commission two years and nine months to decide the case.  Tell me whether those commissioners can claim that they deserve 1 million in performance bonuses!

If that’s not infuriating, then please bear with me while I rant.  The most trying part of the entire process was dealing with people in the docket section — they were rude and crude.  They have no basic good manners.  They do not even talk to litigants like they were people — they are treated as nuisances!  Ask my 70 year old client. She was rebuffed so often that she decided to file a complaint with the Ombudsman.

None of the people she spoke to at the docket section could tell her anything about the status of her case.  At last, they got tired of my client’s importunity (kakulitan) they finally asked a supervisor to answer my client.  The supervisor was more helpful.  She had the good sense to apologize for her inability to give any more details.

She did give us a lot of information as to why the case was getting so delayed.  First, Pres. Noynoy had (allegedly) appointed Jose Cuisia, Jr. to the post of Chairman of the SS Commission but he did not assume the position as he was offered a post as Philippine Ambassador to the US.  So, the position was unoccupied for a long time. It so happened that my client’s case was raffled to the first division which was chaired by the Chairman so none of the cases were decided.

Finally, Bienvenido Laguesma was appointed and he assumed the position.  It still took the Commission two years and nine months to finally decide the case.  What is more infuriating was that the decision only settled the issue of my client’s better right to be declared as the primary legal beneficiary of her deceased husband.  (Thank God!) That decision which was decided in July 2013 only reached me on Tuesday, October 8, 2013.

The decision  will still need to be published (at the expense of the SSS, thank God!) and we will still have to wait for an Entry of Judgment (I wonder how  many years we have to wait for this, too.).  What is more, the decision was mum about how much death benefit she should receive.  The decision states that the SSS should give her all the is due her as death benefits to be computed in accordance with the rules of the SSS from the time of her husband’s death.

This only means that we have to wait for the SSS to collate all the records, evaluate the death benefit claim and wait for them to release the amount.  If we have any complaint about the way it will be computed by the SSS  (because the decision did not specify how the benefit should be computed or how much she should receive), we will have to file another petition before the SS Commission!

One wonders if the decision can ever be considered as ‘final’ since it did not really dispose of ALL the issues…. now, tell me whether the SSS board and the SSS officers deserve their performance bonuses. I, for one, think not. The SSS performance bonuses have no basis at all!