Veteran’s Affairs is facing strong criticism for the ever growing line up of former soldiers waiting for medical and financial help and the man in charge says his department is working on clearing it up.

Up to 44,000 military vets are in queue.

Lawrence MacAulay was on the NL Morning News and said a big reason for the back log is all the new applications. “There’s close to a ninety-some percent increase in applications and sixty percent are first time applications or in that area, I don’t have the figures right before me and of course we want those applications to come in.”

“Many factors have contributed to the problem that we have. Not only, I wouldn’t want to classify it as a problem, but the increase in applications is what we all want but we have a job to do in order to put the system in place and we will.”

MacAulay said they have a plan that they’re implementing. “We want Veterans to seek the programs that are there for them and part of the problem we have is to get veterans to do that.”

“I certainly am pleased that we have more applications coming in but actually, we’re working very hard to digitize the files, to make decisions are made in a faster way and all of that.”

In his latest annual report, Veterans Ombudsman Craig Dalton said wait times is the number one complaint he hears.