During last September’s Senate hearings, Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) officials revealed that they received 25-month bonuses apart from their salaries. One official earned PhP 4 million (USD 95,238) in 2009 alone.

The bonuses include an anniversary bonus, mid-year financial assistance, yearend financial assistance, productivity bonus, performance bonus, educational assistance, rate-rebasing bonus, privatization bonus, efficiency incentive, performance enhancement bonus, corporate Christmas package, traditional Christmas package, calamity financial assistance, scholarship allowance, and family week allowance, among others.

This is in clear violation of a memorandum order issued by the previous administration, which limits the salaries of government-owned and -controlled corporation (GOCC) executives to twice that of Cabinet secretaries.

It is the kind of place that Franz Kafka mighty have imagined when writing The Trial. Perhaps the place painter Eduard Munch imagined his character was running away from in The Scream.

Close by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) complex on Roxas Boulevard in Manila sits the giant hulk of a building that is the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS). To get there you have to ride and pay for the orange CCP shuttle which stops outside the GSIS compound and then walk some 100 meters under the heat of the sun to the main entrance and flights of escalators.