Hanging questions re PVAO pensions

FOR SEVERAL years now, I have been trying to collect from Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO) the increases in my husband’s old age pensions for January-June 2001, and January-June 2002. I also tried to get a definite answer as to when the FAD (Financial Administrative Disability) pension would be paid to non-octogenarian veterans and their beneficiaries.

On June 22, 2009, Nostradamus Villanueva of PVAO wrote me that the old age pension increases for the first semesters of 2001 and 2002 would no longer be paid because of Republic Act 9137. I replied that RA 9137 did not repeal RA 7696 which provided for the pension increases. Villanueva subsequently wrote that I was right about RA 9137, but he reiterated that the pension increases would not be paid, this time saying that RA 7696 only says that old age pension should be increased by P500 every year but does not specify that the increases be paid starting January of every year.

I wrote him that RA 7696 stipulates that, starting January 1995, the monthly old-age pension shall be increased by not less than P500 per month until total old-age pension shall be at least P5,000 per month. I added that per month means “each month” (bawat buwan). Therefore, the pension increases should have been given every month starting January 1995 until the old age pension reached P5,000. I did not hear from Villanueva after that.

Sometime last year, my old age pensions were delayed. I wrote President Aquino about the delay and about the old age pension increases and TAD pensions.

My letter to President Aquino was endorsed to PVAO, after which my old age pensions began arriving on time. However, the letter that I received from Raquel Cajuguiran, acting chief of PVAO’s Claims Division, only told me that PVAO had begun paying TAD pensions to veterans who were octogenarians or older. It did not say when the TAD pensions would be paid to other veterans and their beneficiaries. Also, it skirted the issue of old age pension increases.

My husband died in 2003 at age 71. He became entitled to the TAD pension on his 70th birthday and I, to the counterpart TAD pension for spouses of veterans, also on that day.

I wrote President Aquino again on Feb. 3, 2011 but all I got in reply was another copy of the letter of endorsement to PVAO of my July 22, 2010 letter to him. I believe I would have gotten answers to my questions if President Aquino himself had read my second letter to him.

The amount of money involved may seem insignificant, especially when compared to the amounts involved in the NBN-ZTE deal, the fertilizer fund scam and other scandalous transactions. However, as a nursery rhyme says:

Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean,
And a pleasant land.

I wouldn’t be surprised if money allotted for veterans’ pensions are now part of the more than P43 million PVAO funds that was reported missing in the Jan. 16, 2009 issue of the Inquirer.

ERLINDA P. VILLANUEVA,
3rd Street, Tobiasville,
Bantug, Muñoz Science City,
3119 Nueva Ecija