GSIS deserves a new name: [ ] tafkag

If you ask any government employee what his most despised government agency is, the reply would invariably be the GSIS and then whatever agency that employee is in. In my twenty years in government, I have heard all the 'horror' stories about people learning sadly that others have used their GSIS loan facilities. There are plenty of stories about policy premiums not being recorded despite diligent remittance of deductions. Indeed every government employee has heard of one or two of those.

At the GSIS main office you will see very old people being bodily carried into the building so as to prove that the they are alive. Obviously the GSIS people have not thought of doing the old pensioners a service by visiting them at their homes. Or they have not thought of doing provincial roadshows where the old timers can appear before them. I'm sure there are better ways than requiring them, wheelchair and all, to appear before these lazy, inefficient a$$h013s, but they are too lazy and inefficient to think.

What peeves many are the high salaries and perks enjoyed by the GSIS. They are among the highest paid. They escaped media scrutiny because they did not appear in the COA report published last week. Why? Because the COA has not finished auditing them most probably because of their shoddy record keeping.

At the national grains marketing agency, many did not dare take up an early retirement package offered last year because their GSIS records are in disarray. Now that many agencies face abolition, many again think twice about accepting retirement offers.

With all these, I think the Government Service Insurance System deserves a new name. It's in constant disarray, it appears it has no system. So the word 'system' in its name can go. GSIS=GSI. But wait, GSI is not capable of paying off insurance. They say its funds are dwindling. So the word 'insurance' can go too. GSI=GS. But wait, there's more. What service are we talking about? The word 'service' has to go too. GS=G. And finally, G has not served its client, the government employees, well. The G also has to go. And then we are left with nothing. Very apt, as it had done nothing.

How do we then refer to this nothing of an agency? What is the symbol for nothing? The zero (0) is too elegant to use. Under Winston, this agency has become much less. I propose the symbol []. The brackets are there just to indicate that there is nothing there. The symbol will be referred to as tafkag which means "the agency formerly known as gsis".