The Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) and the Department of Education (DepEd) have agreed to resolve all issues of public school teachers through a memorandum of understanding.

The GSIS, led by its new Chairman Daniel Lacson, initiated discussions with DepEd officials with the aim of finally putting to rest teachers’ concerns, particularly issues on their service records.

The agreement was reached during the first wave of dialogues between the two agencies.

Chairman Lacson recently met with DepEd Undersecretary for Finance and Administration Francisco M. Varela and Assistant Secretary Reynaldo D. Laguda, representing Secretary Armin Luistro, for a dialogue and they agreed to cooperate fully to solve the problems.

A panel, jointly headed by Usec Varela on the part of the DepEd and GSIS Executive Vice President for Operations Consuelo D. Manansala, on the part of the pension fund, has also been formed to work on all issues raised by teachers. Manansala is also the current OIC-President and General Manager of the GSIS.

During the dialogue, the GSIS and the DepEd agreed to make a model arrangement which calls for the pension fund to provide IT technical assistance to DepEd. The IT technical assistance will include, but is not limited to, the provision of computer hardware and software.

In 2005, the GSIS and the DepEd, which comprise 40 percent of the entire membership base of the pension fund, had previously entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) for the purpose of updating teachers’ service records

Meanwhile, in a recent visit to Bacolod by Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad, Chairman Lacson requested the former for DBM’s assistance for the success of the model arrangement which could later be adopted by the GSIS with all other member-agencies.