US forms inter-agency group to review denied claims of Filipino War veterans

President Obama PHOTO/ELTON LUGAY

MANILA, Philippines – The United States (US) government has formed a body that would review the cases of more than 24,000 Filipino war veterans who had claimed that their applications for compensation for services rendered during the Second World War were unfairly denied.

In a statement released Thursday, the Philippine embassy in Washington said that Ambassador Jose Cuisia had reported that the White House announced Wednesday the formation of an Interagency Working Group to review the certification process that denied 24,385 individual applications filed under the Filipino Veterans Equity Compensation Fund.

“We would like to assure our veterans that the Philippine Government will continue to exert strong efforts to convince US authorities to address the certification issue and grant them  the benefits they deserve,” Cuisia said in a statement.

In his report, Cuisia noted that the initiative was spearheaded by Chris Lu, Presidential Assistant and Co-Chair of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders,  and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

“The Interagency Working Group will be tasked with analyzing the process faced by these Filipino veterans in demonstrating eligibility for compensation in order to ensure that all applications receive thorough and fair review,” Lu was quoted as saying.

He noted the  working group would  be made up of representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense, and the National Archives and Record Administration.

Retired Major General Delfin Lorenzana, head of the Office of Veterans Affairs at the Philippine Embassy, meanwhile, noted in a separate statement, that the disqualification issues stemmed from the implementing guidelines approved in 2011 by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

He said the guidelines required certification from the National Personnel Records Center that the names of veteran-claimants appear in both the Roster of Troops and the Discharge List prepared by the US Army at the end of the Second World War.

“Unfortunately, the claims of a large number of Filipino veterans were not processed because their names appear only in one list or the other but not both,” General Lorenzana was quoted as saying.

“What we are requesting the US government is for them to consider all sources of records and not just the two lists,” he added.

Lorenzana noted the disqualified veterans made up 56 percent of the 43,083 surviving veterans who filed their claims under the compensation fund.

He noted that the fund granted a one-time lump sum of  $15,000 for veterans who have become US citizens and $9,000 for those who retained their Philippine citizenship.

He said that so far, a total of $223.7 million from the $265-million compensation fund had been released  to 18,698 Filipino veterans.

The fund was part of the America Recovery and Reinvestment Act that President Barack Obama signed into law in 2009, he was quoted as saying.