As if the Department of Veterans Affairs isn’t shafting the veteran’s enough. How do these people sleep at night?
On April 15 the Stars and Stripes newspaper featured a headline that read, “IG report: VA has been wrongly shredding documents needed for veteran’s claims” revealing the VA has been systemically shredding documents related to veterans’ claims, some potentially affecting their benefits.
According to the article the IG conducted surprise audits at 10 regional offices on July 20, 2015, after an investigation into inappropriate shredding in Los Angeles found that staff there was destroying veterans’ mail related to claims according to an OIG report released Thursday.
In unannounced visits to six regional offices investigators sifted through 438,000 documents awaiting destruction as of 11 a.m.
Of 155 claims-related documents, 69 were found to have been incorrectly placed in shred bins.
Investigators determined that two of the 69 documents affected benefits directly, nine had the potential to affect benefits and the rest would not affect benefits but were required to be in the claims folders before destruction and were not there.
The report said the findings were enough to conclude that not only were the problems systemic, the impact could be serious.
The response from the Veteran’s Benefits Administration: It denied that the findings indicated a systemic issue.
Which leads me back to my original question which was and still is, how do these people sleep at night?
Bill Viggiano
Williston Park
