Learn from our departed

By Jun Velasco

WITH All Saints Day just around the corner, it may be well for most of us, especially our national leaders, to ponder the temporariness of life.

The confusion at the top has been draining our energies. Colleagues, family members and kins are lost in the haze and maze of political intrigues. The worsening rift is due to the fact that   millions not of   pesos but of dollars are involved, and it behooves upon all of us to let the law take its due course while we move heaven and earth to support the return of normally as soon as possible.

Let’s pray – with the help of our forbears and grandparents who have gone to the Great Beyond – that God spare the nation from harm in these politically tumultuous times. The tempest should remind us that man-made temporal power will always bow out to the Awesome Power that rules over all of us.  Let us visit our departed ones and learn a lesson or two from them in our quest for   peace and tranquility.      

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 Last Tuesday, we accompanied 89-year-old ma-in-law to GSIS Dagupan to renew her membership in that government agency, validate her pensioner’s ID or “eCard Plus” so she could collect her regular pensions as a former school principal.

We have heard so many complaints against the GSIS, but it was only then that we saw why. Some of its personnel were inept and devoid of sympathy and care for members.  In Dagupan, we saw how obsolete its equipment was in reflecting the fingerprints of an aging member.

It took the aging former principal three hours to accomplish her purpose largely because of the branch’s three inefficient biometric machines. Had we not called the attention of the branch assistant manager (the manager was in Manila) to the problem, the old woman would have been asked to return the following day.

We saw several  other  similarly  situated  aging pensioners in helplessly struggling under  the same  snail paced process, taking their ordeal as a matter of course  we wondered at  their  gargantuan  patience. For the record, mother-in-law was only able to get out of harm’s way when Asst. Manager Ludgardo Hernandez assigned a lady personnel to work things out … well, after a long and painstaking two-hour struggle.

Some of the other old women and men, one of them in a wheel chair, suffered the same fate.  One of them, an octogenarian from Umingan had to come to Dagupan because the Urdaneta branch also had a similar “Jurrasic” machine. A not-so-old member, Jonathan Velasco Corpuz, from Bayambang town, probably out of sheer exasperation, blurted, “ano ba kayong mga taga GSIS, may pambili kayo ng multi million paintings, hindi naman kayo makabili ng gumaganang biometric machines kahit na second hand.”

That incident at the GSIS Dagupan highlights an urgent need to radically improve the system and the kind of public service we despise.

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Tomorrow is judgment day for thousands of village leaders aspiring to be elected barangay captains and kagawads unabashedly posing as God-sent saviors who could effect improvements in our communities.

In this country, elections provide our people with an entertainment fare that temporarily shields them from the slings and arrows of poverty, disgust and outrageous political   fortune as shown by our national leaders who, according to a critic, are outdoing each other in ruining the country.

But   instead of slamming the door on what these aspiring leaders can do to our barangays, let’s wish them the best of luck and lots of prayers because the uncertainty in the national leadership has not dampened their fighting spirit to serve.  

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/think-about-it/ Readers may reach columnist at junmv@yahoo.com . For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

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