Drilon to veterans office: Check for 'ghost pensioners'

Senator Franklin Drilon on Tuesday asked the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO) to double-check its list of pensioners to cast away doubts that the Department of National Defense (DND) is funding the pension of "ghost" veterans. "I require the PVAO to submit to the committee a listing of all the pensioners that we are now paying pension (for). We suspect that there are a lot of ‘ghost pensioners,’ and this is the only way that we can ferret them out," Drilon said after the Senate hearing on the DND budget. The senator said that there are currently 30,273 living World War II veterans, supposedly aged 85 and above, and 80,876 surviving spouses, also around the same age, for whom the government is spending P6.6 billion this year. "We do not know how the number of pensioners is determined from year to year. But certainly we raise doubts as to the accuracy of these figures," he said. For 2011, the government has allocated P6 billion for pension. Aside from the 111,149 surviving WWII veterans and spouses, Drilon said a total of P12.684 billion is also allocated in the current year for 284,000 pensioners. In 2011, the allocation will amount to P12.7 billion for 271,698 pensioners. Drilon said that 80 percent of the DND's P104.6-billion budget for 2011 would go to personnel service — P45.7 billion for active members of the Armed Forces and P36.8 billion for retirees, including WWII veterans. "In nine years time, assuming there would be no increases in the salary of the active personnel, our pension requirements would be equal to what we pay those in the active service," he said. Drilon noted, however, that it is not the DND’s fault that it has to allocate such a big amount to personnel services. "It’s not wrong, they are forced by the circumstance because by law, you have to pay the veterans’ pension. They have no choice on that because they are controlled by the number of veterans on the list," he said. Drilon said that they plan to coordinate with the Department of Budget and Management after they receive the list of pensioners from the PVAO. Meanwhile, he said he has also asked the DND for a report on the utilization of the P31-billion modernization fund. "The basis of our reports coming from the DND during the hearing did not tally with what they told us," he said.—Kimberly Jane T. Tan/JV, GMANews.TV