The Government Service Insurance System said Tuesday it reached out to the widows of Special Action Force 44 policemen by hiring them as personnel in GSIS Zamboanga operations.
GSIS Chairman Rolando Ledesma Macasaet said in a statement: “In 2018, the GSIS branch office in Zamboanga was in need of additional people after a considerable number of its personnel retired and requested transfer to other branches.
“Heeding President Duterte’s appeal to give priority to qualified SAF 44 widows in government employment, we hired the four SAF 44 widows in December 2018 as personnel after their applications were evaluated and they were found qualified for the job under standard operating procedures.”
According to the widows, they applied for work in GSIS because they had to look for the additional source of income to sustain their family’s needs and at the same time, find a way to heal after they lost their husbands in a bloody encounter with the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters on January 25, 2015.
One of the women, Lhea Tabdi, widow of Senior Police Senior Inspector, Gednat Tabdi, was a former health worker in the City Health Office of Lamitan City who had to resign after the tragedy to take care of her three-year-old son.
These days, she finds fulfillment attending to the transacting clients of GSIS Zamboanga.
The other widows hired by GSIS are Emeliza Danao, wife of Police Officer 2 Walner F. Danao; Margaret Manuel, common-law wife of Police Officer 2 Joel B. Dulnuan; and Adelisa Bedua, wife of Police Officer 2 Glenn B. Bedua.
Bedua cried as she exclaimed how grateful she is for the opportunity, according to the GSIS statement. She is now assigned at the branch offices' Loans and eServices Unit. Being conversant in Tausug and functions as an interpreter between GSIS staff and applicants from Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, and Basilan.
Over a month into the job, Manuel says she is now comfortable working at the branch office’s Special Business Unit and “mabait sila” of the people that she has worked with.
She provides assistance in encoding various contracts.
Danao herself said she was happy in her assignment at the GSIS Billing and Collection Unit.
Chairman Rolly Ledesma Macasaet, a Zamboangueño from the Ledesma clan, recalled that GSIS paid the Employee Compensation funeral benefits of SAF 44 policemen and released the initial pension benefits of their survivors barely a month after the tragedy struck.
The surviving spouses and dependents of qualified SAF 44 policemen have since been receiving EC pension administered by the GSIS.
GSIS is the first agency under President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration to provide this kind of assistance to SAF 44 families.
