The Human Rights Victims’ Claims Board (HRVCB) has officially ended the filing of claims for compensation of human rights victims under the Martial Law, and is now set to evaluate almost 47,000 applications.
At a press briefing on Wednesday, HRVCB chairperson Lina Sarmiento announced that they have closed on Monday their intake operations at the University of the Philippines – Diliman and at its 14 desks at the regional offices of the Commission on Human Rights.
“We will now go to the next stage of the reparation process — the investigation and evaluation stage to determine the legitimate claimants and the appropriate points to be awarded to each victim,” Sarmiento said.
She, however, admitted that they may not finish the evaluation by their deadline in September 2015 due to the unexpected high number of claimants.
“The biggest challenge is the number of people (claimants). We actually prepared for 20,000, but we got more than double,” she said. “That’s a huge leap from what we expected.”
She added that they are also expecting for the number to rise further if Congress will approve a motion seeking for the extension of the filing period.
“We are expecting an additional of 10,000 to 20,000 claimants,” she said.
Sarmiento said due to the “surge” of claimants, they would be needing additional staff to be able to meet the deadline.
She noted that they currently have five lawyers and three paralegals assigned to evaluate the application forms.
“Definitely not sufficient enough to evaluate 50,000 cases,” she said, noting that they would ask Congress for additional staff.
Under Republic Act 10368, the HRVCB was created to receive, evaluate, and process applications for recognition and reparation of victims of human rights violations during Martial Law.
After the evaluation of applications, the HRVCB will publish a list of eligible claimants on at least two national newspapers of general circulation once a week for three consecutive weeks, said Sarmiento.
Rejected claimants would then be given a chance to appeal the decision, and after deliberation, the HRVCB will release a final list, she added.
The monetary repatriation will come from the P10 billion fund, which was part of the ill-gotten wealth of former President Ferdinand Marcos recovered in Switzerland. —KG, GMA News
