Department of Veterans Affairs officials today announced plans to bring in outside contractors to help them deal with the thousands of unprocessed new GI Bill claims, and to try and avoid a similar fate for the spring semester.

In a statement under secretary for benefits Patrick Dunne called the move an effort to correct problems as quickly as possible.

“Veterans are depending on VA to provide the benefits they earned through their service to our nation," he said. "We will do everything in our power to minimize delays for our veteran-students.”

Earlier this month VA officials told Congress that more than 30,000 student veterans out of about 82,000 had not received any of the promised new GI Bill benefits by mid-October, and some may have to wait until 2010 before seeing checks.

The Department did make available emergency $3,000 checks for veterans awaiting the housing and book stipends, as a partial advance on those benefits. Veterans groups hailed that move as a temporary fix, but emphasized that the VA still needed to find some way to process the backlog quicker.

VA claims processors estimate that sorting through just one new GI Bill claim takes over an hour, compared to under 15 minutes for the older GI Bill program benefits. That, coupled with the large numbers of students using the benefit this semester, caused a larger workload than the VA anticipated, officials said.

On Wednesday AMVETS issued a statement on the hiring of new contractors which noted that the delays "are at a point where something drastic must be done." VA officials did not provide details on the contract, but said the new claims processors will begin work within days.

[PHOTO: Marshall University]