Civil Service Commission commends Torres

“The governor has stepped up and done the right thing,” declared Herman Deleon Guerrero, chairman of the CNMI government’s Civil Service Commission. “His reinstatement of the within-grade increase program for Civil Service employees is long overdue. The CNMI government’s hardworking employees have not received performance increases since 2001 when the benefits were suspended.”

On June 3, 2016 Gov. Ralph DLG Torres signed Directive 2016-002 lifting the suspension on Public Law 7-31 authorized within-grade increases and Public Law 11-59 authorized bonuses for Civil Service employees that have been suspended since 2001 due to a lack of funding.

The directive states that if a department or agency has the available funding, that entity may issue these benefits to eligible employees on their anniversary date starting on May 1, 2016. It emphasizes that the lifting of this suspension is not a guarantee that all eligible employees will receive their increase or bonus. Increases and bonus payments can only be made if personnel funding is available. The directive does not authorize any retroactive payments or payments to an employee who has left government service or left the Civil Service.  The directive provides that all future increases and payments will be contingent upon the availability of funding.

All increases are performance based. The Within-Grade Increase is contingent upon satisfactory performance for the last 52 consecutive weeks. Receipt of the PL 11-59 bonus depends upon satisfactory performance for the immediately previous two years for those classified civil service employees frozen at the top step their pay grade for the previous two years.

“I think it’s important to recognize that these increases are all based on performance.  Performance evaluations must be accomplished on each eligible employee attesting to satisfactory or higher performance.  For the past 15 years there has been no salary recognition of the hard work and fine performance of our Civil Service Employees.  As a result the government has lost many good employees and others have carried on without increase,” stated chair Deleon Guerrero. “We commend the governor for ending this stagnation and reinstating the government’s performance incentive program.” (PR)