By Hannah Torregoza The Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) is now trying to work on the possibility of granting educational loans to members whose children are in college to help them cope amid the COVID-19 pandemic. GSIS president Rolando Macasaet disclosed this on Friday during the Senate finance committee hearing on the various COVID-19 recovery and economic stimulus budget bills, spearheaded by its panel chief, Sen. Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara. “I am very much concerned that there’ll be a mass exodus of the private schools going to government schools,” Macasaet said during the hearing. The GSIS official said the plan would help benefit the private schools that are now struggling to keep afloat amid the global health crisis, as well as parents who wish to see their children finish their degrees in the next four to five years. “I think we’ll be able to implement it as soon as possible so that there’ll be a way for us to at least give relief to these government schools, that there would be no movement. Because this problem might result in collapse of the private schools,” Macasaet said. According to Macasaet, the plan is to offer GSIS members, who are at least 15 years (in service), a 10-year educational loan. “While the student is still studying in the next four years, or five years, the member can probably pay the interest for the meantime and after five years, you start paying the interest or principal. “That way, the monthly amortization is so little and then on the sixth year, the son or the daughter would have now start working and both of them can pay the loan,” he pointed out. Angara, in response, said he welcomes the idea but cautioned the GSIS to ensure that their criteria would not be in any way discriminatory for those “who might need the loan more.” “When you say you want to limit it to those members of 15 years, that might discriminate against the ones who need it more because if you're already a 15-year member of the GSIS, you're already earning substantially, I would think,” Angara said as he urged the GSIS to carefully study such mechanism. Macasaet, however, reasoned that members for that span of years are usually those who already have dependents in college. “Because, after 15 years that’s the only time that GSIS is invested on you already. So I can protect the fund of GSIS, and at the same time, I’m able to help,” Macasaet said. Macasaet, however, said the state insurance agency is still in the planning stage but they are “rushing the details” of the education loan program structure to ensure there won’t be any big risk as far as the funds of the GSIS is concerned.