Veterans’ heirs suffering from slowpokes at DBM

Balita columnist Bert de Guzman was so alarmed that he called last Wednesday. He had just read my column on the MRT-3 being a disaster waiting to happen due to non-upkeep by its unqualified contractors. He recalled how, about this time 14 years ago at a press conference, I waved a thick document in front of the Quezon City mayor (now deceased). It was a technical report on the Payatas Dump, warning of possible collapse of the thousands of tons of garbage piled about 100 feet high, as tall as a ten-story building. “You begged him to do something about it, remember?” Bert recounted.

Frankly I didn’t, so I Google-searched, and there it was. Newsflash: the tower of trash toppled under heavy July rains. Thirty-one scavengers were crushed to death inside their shanties, and 29 others were injured. Sixty-eight more, including foreign missionaries and social workers, were reported missing, their bodies never recovered underneath the gooey, stinky rubble.

Then I realized what Bert was driving at. Here I am again, shouting myself hoarse, about the MRT-3’s malfunctioning signal system, and unmaintained trams, tracks, and power supply. Any time, trains could collide, ignite, or derail and fall onto the busy avenue below. Every day the lives and limbs of 560,000 passengers are imperiled.

I pray to be proven wrong. But I based my reports on records 20 inches thick from the MRT-3, DOTC, Metro Rail Transit Corp. that built the railway, and former maintainer Sumitomo Corp.

President Noynoy Aquino was given a three-page précis last April.

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Say something good, and political intriguers will distort your words and question your motives. Grace Poe learned that the painful way recently, after speaking to the Senate on the 10th anniversary of the “Hello Garci” scandal.

Seeking “justice and reforms,” the first-term senator recounted the 2004 presidential race between her father Fernando Poe Jr. and incumbent Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. FPJ’s clinching of the vote-rich Lingayen-Lucena Corridor had wiped out GMA’s “buffer votes” elsewhere, so for 15 times in 15 days she illegally kept phoning election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano to make her win in Mindanao. It was tricky, for Mindanao was matinee idol FPJ’s bailiwick. GMA and Garcillano’s “dagdag-bawas” (vote padding-shaving) at the provincial canvassing was detected. Worse for the duo, a military spy tasked to wiretap election officials leaked the incriminating tapes of GMA opening her calls with, “Hello, Garci.”

Garci has never stayed a day in jail for that electoral sabotage. Present Comelec chief and supposed vanguard of poll security Sixto Brillantes in fact has let the case against him prescribe. Meanwhile, some whistleblowers are languishing in penury. So Poe filed bills to review and amend the Election Code. The reforms she advocates are so wide-ranging to include electoral sabotage among the crimes covered by the Wiretapping Act.

For recalling the villains, intriguers twitted Poe’s alleged publicity stunt at the expense of the late FPJ’s legacy. Too, for purportedly picturing voters as cheaters in areas where GMA-Garci had rigged the count.

 Notably, although Poe landed first in the 12-man senatorial race of 2013, she is examining the Comelec’s audit report to get to the bottom of the “Hocus-PCOS.”

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Reader Jerome Palermo sent a copy of his letter to the Philippine Veterans Administration Office:

“We are writing, after over a year of waiting to hear from your office, to follow up the benefit claim of my grandmother, Mrs. Antonina D. Palermo, who passed away three years ago. Your letter of June 8, 2012, stated, ‘the monetary benefit of the legal heirs has already been prepared. However, payment cannot be effected due to budgetary constraints.’ We waited patiently for two budgetary periods. We therefore follow up the very long overdue release, since the claim was approved as far back as 1993.”

Sniffing around, I found out that benefit claims by children or grandchildren of veterans — “posthumous accounts” — are treated least priority. Such claims are only for a few thousand pesos a month. The PVAO dutifully submits all claims — by living vets, widows, and other heirs — for payment by the Dept. of Budget and Management. The DBM allocates only for the first set, and schedules the two others for later, only God knows when.

That’s cruel, given how the DBM hastily had released multibillion-pesos for congressional and presidential pork barrels, for plundering by lawmakers, implementing agency heads, and fixers like Janet Lim Napoles, Ruby Tuason, et al.

I stumbled upon a letter of another claimant, widow Juanita B. Sierras, who was constrained to write directly to the DBM. She currently is receiving monthly pension, but the DBM is in arrears for years in releasing to her the lump sum from when her vet-husband died to when the PVAO registered her as beneficiary widow.

In so many words, the DBM advised Sierras to wait for only God knows how many more years, because they are still ascertaining the claims, and to not tire of following up with them.

To which Sierras replied last May 29 (excerpted):

“I meant to answer as soon as I read your letter, but I suffered a mild stroke after it. I was so frustrated that my blood pressure shot up. In your first email to me in Jan., you said: ‘I regret to inform you that PVAO has yet to submit to us the list of arrears recipients, approved in 2013, with corresponding request for funding, so I can formally process your request.’ Now that you have received from PVAO what you need, you give me a different reason for the delay of payment.

“Why does it take so long for your validation, when you have access to government intelligence offices, like the NBI and PNP-CIDG, or can hire private investigators if you do not trust the PVAO’s background check of us?

“After my husband died in 1997 I dedicated my life to volunteer work in the Catholic Church. For 15 years now I train volunteers on prison ministry. I work for free, and spend my own money for it. If one can do good work for free, those with pay should do theirs efficiently.”

Our vets — and their families — suffered in fighting enemies of the state, and now suffer some more under slowpoke DBM officials.

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