In the next budget discussions, members of the Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives will examine the Military and Uniformed Personnel (MUP) pension system, House Deputy Minority Leader France Castro said on a statement on Sunday, July 30.
According to Castro they will really scrutinize the MUP pension budget because according to Department of Budget and Management (DBM), it will reach P300 billion in the 2024 budget.
“Now the issue is that drug cops can still get their pension and the overpayment or underpayment of pension,” said Castro, an ACT party-list representative who belongs to the bloc.
The lawmaker bared the plan after the Commission on Audit (COA) discovered errors in the list of Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) pensioners that led to P17.095 million in overpayment and P2.301 million in underpayment last year.
The AFP was required by the COA to update and reconcile its PenMIS (Pension Management Information System).
Castro used the COA report when he claimed that the COA had criticized the AFP for failing to identify and remove 1,026 past-due pensioners from the pension payroll. Those retirees put off providing their status updates for a few months to over a year.
The study stated that as a result, "continuous payment of monthly pension benefits totaling P159.420 million to unverified pensioners" was made.
“Even if the AFP management said that of the 1,026 pensioners cited by the auditors, 364 were already deleted from the pensioner payroll, millions of taxpayer’s funds are still being spent without being sure if they are indeed going to deserving pensioners,” Castro noted.
