The Department of Education (DepEd), which should be the epitome of integrity, has failed to remit billions of pesos in employee contributions, endangering teachers’ access to essential benefits.

The backlog is a gargantuan P5.77-billion in unremitted mandatory deductions to the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG, as reported by the Commission on Audit (CoA) in 2024.

The DepEd has acknowledged the shortcoming and has asked Congress to allocate P3 billion in the 2026 national budget to help it settle its outstanding obligation to the GSIS, particularly the counterpart government contributions.

The DepEd has reconciled its records with the GSIS and verified that P3 billion in arrears remain from the government’s share of contributions, which the department said was the result of its difficulty in meeting GSIS’ compliance threshold. It had only remitted at least 95 percent of the contributions due to its highly decentralized structure, which includes over 2,900 implementing units managing funds for almost one million employees.

Failure to remit the contributions on time can expose DepEd employees to various penalties, including delayed loan processing, ineligibility for benefits, and weakened retirement security.