CNMI DOL issues $230M total in PUA benefits

With the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program expiring last Saturday, the CNMI Department of Labor reports that roughly over $230 million in federal funds have been disbursed for all three PUA stages.

During a press briefing last Friday, Labor Secretary Vicky Benavente said the U.S. Department of Labor allocated roughly $700 million specifically for unemployment assistance in the CNMI. Of the $700 million, Benavente said, only $230 million has been used so far.

“About $700 million [was allocated] for all three PUA stages during the CARES Act, Continued Assistance Act, and American Rescue Plan Act. We received several grants from USDOL totaling about $700 million or more. We have disbursed only around $230 million to eligible applicants,” she said.

However, with the submission of claims and applications extended to October, CNMI DOL still expects to pay out thousands of PUA claims. Last week alone, DOL paid out over $4 million to 568 PUA claimants which represented over 5,000 weekly claims.

“I believe there are so many people continuing to submit weekly claims and we had a few actually submitting initial claims, meaning there are claimants reporting that they have just lost their jobs,” she said.

To date, roughly 1,000 are still awaiting PUA benefits, Benavente said. “There are still about 1000 who are still waiting on their PUA benefits to date. Mainly PUA 2 and PUA 3,” she said.

So far, since the inception of the program back in March 2020 up until August, Benavente said the department has received over 40,000 application. Of that number, roughly 10,000 PUA applicants were deemed eligible and have been paid out.

“We’re estimating around 9,000 and 10,000 PUA claimants in the CNMI, including Tinian and Rota, have received PUA benefits since 2020 to August 2021. These are claimants who have been deemed eligible regarding eligibility and completion of applications. We received closed to 40,000 PUA applications, including fraudulent ones, but only around 10,000 were deemed eligible,” she said.

“People in our PUA team continue to adjudicate and resolve many issues from claimants who are submitting documents as quickly as they can so we can expedite their PUA claims,” Benavente added.

Unfortunately, because the CNMI economy continues to suffer as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Benavente said people still continue to lose their jobs or remain unemployed and to top it off, unemployment assistance has come to an end.

“We still continue to see the effect on our economy due to the pandemic starting from 2020 to this day. We were hoping for a bounce back fairly quickly due to the CNMI being the safest place in the world—I truly believe that, thanks to our team—but we’re still hearing that there is still reduction in hours or complete furlough of employees in [local] businesses,” she said.