Over three thousand pension applications to the Department of Military Veterans (DMV) were rejected by the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA) as of January this year a Parliamentarian was informed.
All told, according to Defence and Military Veterans Minister Angie Motshekga, 13 314 old soldiers applied for veterans’ pension benefits by January. She did not indicate, in her reply to Maliyakhe Shelembe, for what period the applications covered stating 6 254 were under consideration, 1 397 were approved and 3 987 rejected without elaboration. The Democratic Alliance (DA) number two in the party’s specialist defence and military veterans’ oversight team was also not given the number of military veterans paid the pensions due to them (this was a possible omission from the Parliamentary Monitoring Group listing of Parliamentary questions and answers).
Just on a month ago, Shelembe and the third DA Parliamentary defence and military veterans’ oversight team, National Council of Provinces (NCOP) Member of Parliament (MP) Nicholas Gotsell, were informed by Motshekga the military veterans’ database had 87 000 plus names “with the number increasing daily”.
Compilation and checking the database is necessary to ensure veterans are what they claim to be and can access benefits from healthcare to business and education assistance as well as pension.
