MT. SAMAT, Bataan ? President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said the government would tap grandchildren of World War II veterans for the recently-launched National Service Corps, which is geared towards community service.

In a speech during the 67th Araw ng Kagitingan (Day of Valor) celebrations at the Dambana ng Kagitingan (Shrine of Valor) war memorial here, Arroyo also announced that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is looking for 10,000 "field engineers" for its poverty mapping project.

"I would like to instruct, [defense] undersecretary [Ernesto] Carolina to help us identify grandchildren of Filipino World War II veterans [who] can be recruited to the National Service Corps. This is another way of helping our veterans," she said.

Arroyo likened the P1-billion poverty mapping project to a GPS (Global Positioning System) device that will locate poor families eligible for conditional cash transfers and subsidized rice from the government.

"The DSWD needs an army of field engineers in assembling a concise picture of poverty and coordinate where poor households are," she said.