An office within the Department of Veterans Affairs that protects the rights of whistleblowers will hold a meeting with two of them this week in order to gauge how they're being treated at the troubled agency.
According to The Daily Caller, Kuauhtemoc Rodriguez, who works at the Phoenix VA, and Sean Higgins of the Memphis VA are scheduled to speak with the VA's Central Whistleblower Office on Friday to discuss the process of how employees blow the whistle and the challenges they've faced along the way.
The VA has been plagued by scandals in recent years, ranging from falsified wait lists to sanitary problems at many of its facilities. Some whistleblowers have faced retaliation after going public with the problems they saw.
Higgins, reports The Daily Caller, has exercised his rights as a whistleblower more than 30 times and was fired twice. The VA brought him back both times after he claimed discrimination played a role in his termination.
Rodriguez could be fired over his role in blowing the whistle about the myriad problems at the Phoenix VA, including the wait times scandal that resulted in the deaths of dozens of veterans who were waiting to be seen by a doctor.
Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that created the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection within the VA to protect both whistleblowers and patients.
"With the creation of this office, we are sending a strong message: Those who fail our veterans will be held, for the first time, accountable," Trump said. "And at the same time, we will reward and retain the many VA employees who do a fantastic job, of which we have many."
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