Setting benchmarks at the SSS (2)

published 4 August 2008, MST

This is the first Monday in seven years that just-resigned Social Security System president and chief executive officer Corazon De la Paz-Bernardo would be spending as she wished.

She intends to catch up: Spend more time with her daughter as well as with her husband of a few months (she remarried in October), Mr. Enrique Bernardo, a high school classmate and former golfing buddy. She wishes she could go back to the sport, but she needs time to rest and recover. “I want to heal myself,” she says, “so I would not be a burden to other people.”

She had been used to being the strong one, the one who defied odds and hurdled obstacles—professional and otherwise. She graduated salutatorian from Rizal High School, what used to be the biggest high school in the world. She finished accounting, magna cum laude, at the University of the East. She placed first in her batch’s licensure exams. She moved on to pursue her MBA in Cornell University as a Fulbright and UE scholar. Then she joined Price Waterhouse, stayed there for decades and retired as senior partner.

And yet, more than her natural intelligence, drive and management skills, De la Paz-Bernardo says she has built her reputation on saying no.

“If I tell you to do something and you think I am wrong, I expect you to tell me,” she says, adding that she used this approach with her team at the SSS when she went on board in 2001. In the same manner, “if you tell me to do something, and I believe it is not doable, I will tell you it cannot be done.” Certainly, for all her years in the private sector and in the government combined, this attitude has displeased some people. But it has also earned for her their respect.

De la Paz-Bernardo attributes this approach to her partnership background. Because of this, she refuses to take all the credit for the gains made by the SSS in recent years under her watch. She says her people have been her indispensable partners in moving closer to the agency’s goals. They had to sacrifice much and give up perks they had been used to as well as their lighter workload. They became mindful that they had to make themselves relevant to the SSS members. Employees became empowered, knowing that the solution was not an elusive magic formula, but had been in their hands all this time.

This, aside from making collections exceed benefit payments, extending the Fund’s actuarial life by 21 years, and increasing employers’ contributions, is what De la Paz-Bernardo considers her greatest achievement at the agency.

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In fact, her good work in social security has gone beyond the country’s territorial bounds. In 2004, De la Paz-Bernardo was elected president of the Geneva-based International Social Security Association. This group is closely associated with the International Labor organization, a United Nations agency. Her election is a first for Filipinos, for Asians, and for non-Europeans—and for women. She was re-elected in 2007; and now, notwithstanding her resignation as SSS president, it is likely she would be asked to complete her term until 2010.

The international forum seeks to strengthen the administrative and organizational capacity of social security agencies. Employees of member-nations are trained to improve compliance with international standards and resist political interference from their governments. The agency also wants to involve people from the informal sector into the system.

Through the ISSA, De la Paz-Bernardo has been acquainted with the social security problems of other countries For instance, in Africa, a parent’s affliction with HIV means the other parent is sick as well. How then does the system take care of orphans and deal with the loss of manpower resources at the same time? In China, where the one-child policy has been in place for quite some time now, there is a growing number of old people and less of the young to take care of them. One way or another, the state has to step in.

Here at home, De la Paz-Bernardo says the migrant worker phenomenon has significantly changed the situation. All of a sudden, there are grandparents, who must be taken care of themselves, now taking care of very young children whose parents are working abroad. Our vast workforce in foreign lands also needs more protection than ever, especially if their host countries or employers are content with just giving them their salaries and nothing more. Clearly, there is a need for more ways to reach out to the expanded membership.

After seven years at the SSS, De la Paz-Bernardo has seen more of “the other side” of the Philippines. In her private sector days, she led a cloistered life in Makati. She lived, worked and held meetings there. But the SSS has brought her to more places and into interaction with all kinds of people. “When you see old people waiting in line for money that they will use to pay for their grandchildren’s tuition, that really makes you sit up and evaluate the things you may be taking for grated.” Why, she says there is not even that much pressure to dress as elegantly as she used to!

Working at SSS may have worsened her health problems. But De la Paz-Bernardo steps down rewarded at, in her own way, having helped others and being “part of something bigger than myself.” She wishes that her successor, former National Economic and Development Authority Director General Romulo Neri, would pursue the reforms and do well by the SSS members by making the Fund’s interest a priority.

De la Paz-Bernardo looks forward to the day when the economy would flourish (the extraneous shocks of food and fuel prices out of the way), when people would have bigger incomes, and thus would be able to make bigger contributions to a relevant, trustworthy and efficient Social Security System. The agency would in turn make sure that the young help the old, the men help the women, the able help the sick, and a member is helped, not so much based on the manner of payment ( a function of income level) but on his or her specific needs. Now that’s real security in the system.