I am sharing with you guys parts of an email I sent to all my colleagues, the bosses included, just a few minutes ago. Parts have been edited of course.


Hello Everyone;

I would like to share with you my experience yesterday, October 9. Hopefully, we all will get something from this.

I went to PAGIBIG office in Atrium today to follow up on my housing application. I was advised not to proceed with my application because I am not an active member of PAGIBIG . By that, they mean that I have not contributed to the PAG-IBIG FUND since January 2009, when my last employer remitted my loan payments and contributions.

Then, I went to SSS . Turns out that my online information was correct. Last SSS contribution they received from me was back in September 2008 when I paid for my SSS as a voluntary member.

This is truly disappointing, disheartening, and demoralizing. I have been with this companyy for a year and four months now and this issue STILL has not been resolved. I have talked with other employees and it appears that none of us have received a decent answer about our SSS and PAGIBIG queries. Instead, we are faced with bureaucratic red tape that I ONLY associate with government agencies. And this makes me sad.

Do I have to stress the importance of updated SSS and PAGIBIG contributions? We are all aware the disaster caused by Ondoy. We all suffered from this catastrophe one way or another. Fortunately, most of us lost only material things. But those material things need to be replaced. If we are only updated with our SSS and PAGIBIG contributions, we can avail of much-needed calamity loans to help rebuild our lives and help families in need.

I did not write this letter to put a blame on anybody. What I want is to finally get these things sorted out. If I remember correctly, it was promised that these things would be taken care of by October of last year, when the company asked us to sign our new employment contracts. A year has passed since then and still we have no desirable results. I think I speak not only for myself when I say that I am getting tired of waiting.

Here are the actions that employees can take in cases like ours. They are suggested to me by people that I talked to at SSS and PAGIBIG .

1. Register as self-paying members in PAGIBIG .
2. Pay SSS contributions as a voluntary member. The deadline for paying for July to October 2009 is on the 20th of October.

My final words: We need more transparency here regarding the issues I have discussed above. If there is anything we can do to get this household in order, please let us know. But PLEASE, do not ask us to wait.



I received a response from no less than the owner and president of our company regarding this issue within a couple of hours of sending this email. He responded to my call for action and discussed these issues with me.  And you know what's the amazing thing about it? He's the only one who did so! The colleagues who were having the same problem as I do read the email but never replied to the email. They did text me though. Why didn't they hit the reply all button? Your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway, I got the answers I wanted from my e-mail. As I told my boss, a little transparency goes a long way. Hope we all learned something from this.