Majuro Nitijela Member and retired US Army veteran Kalani Kaneko has been named by the US Veterans Administration to chair a new Congressionally-established advisory committee.
In a September 13 letter to Kaneko, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough said he was appointing Kaneko as chairman of the new Department of Veterans Affairs Advisory Committee on US Outlying Areas and Freely Associated States.
The new advisory committee was established recently by the US Congress in response to rising concerns and complaints from the hundreds of US military veterans who live in the RMI and other islands and are unable to access medical benefits to which they are entitled unless they pay for expensive airline tickets out of their own pockets to get to Hawaii or Guam. Kaneko has been vocal the past few years in lobbying the US government to address this unequal service for island veterans.
McDonough told Kaneko the aim of the advisory committee is to advise the VA secretary on ways to “improve the programs and services of the Department to better serve such Veterans (resident in the freely associated states and territories of the US).”