Former judge takes over VA Office

by Lannie Walker

Guam - The new head of the Veterans Affairs Office is a veteran himself, as well as an attorney and a former U.S. District Court of Guam judge. John Unpincgo says one of his first priorities in office is improving the grounds at the Veterans Cemetery. He says to do this he plans to hire a full-time employee to ensure the grounds are kept up.

The Veterans Clinic is another issue Unpingco is taking a hard look at. He says right now only one doctor mans the clinic and he would like to see that number increase to three. In the meantime, Unpingco says he hopes to get temporary extra manpower at the clinic while a more permanent solution can be reached.

But funding is at the root of many of the ills that plague the office, and Unpingco says a pressing matter to address is to establish an accurate count of the number of veterans on Guam. "And that concerns me because a lot of the federal funding programs are contingent on numbers and the more numbers we can show the more grants we can apply for," he explained.

Unpincgo says he plans to appeal to village mayors to have veterans register at their offices in order to come up with that accurate count.