Finance says $700K OT paid out

The government has so far released some $700,000 for the long overdue payment of overtime work rendered by former and current government employees, Finance Secretary Fermin M. Atalig said yesterday.

“We started the payment of overtime beginning summer this year,” said Atalig.

He said the payment was made pursuant to Saipan Local Law 7-31, which authorizes the settlement of retroactive salaries and overtime of government employees between the pay period ending June 1, 1991 through the pay period ending Aug. 20, 1994.

As for the retroactive salary payment, Atalig said the government had earlier paid out $5.9 million using Saipan local poker fee funds for Saipan government employees.

Rota and Tinian government employees have yet to receive their retroactive salaries.

Meantime, the Finance secretary said that employees or retirees who lost their check stubs but are eligible to receive OT payments are being accommodated.

“We came out with the regulations allowing people to give us their Retirement Fund documents to receive OT payment,” he said.

Last July, the department issued an emergency regulation allowing the use of individual contribution records from the NMI Retirement Fund to compute the payment of overtime work rendered by current and former government employees who have not yet been paid because they cannot produce their check stubs.

Since the Fund record does not indicate regular hours, overtime hours, or any other form of premium pay, these assumptions were made:

* 15 percent of the retroactive salary adjustment payment would be deducted from all Police, Fire, Corrections, Customs, Immigration, and Quarantine employees to factor out night differential pay. This is based on the assumption that at least a portion of premium pay for these employees is not eligible for the retroactive overtime payment.

* Any typhoon overtime hours will be paid at 1.5 rate rather than the 2.0 rate.

Employees receiving retroactive payments pursuant to the regulations will be required to sign a waiver releasing the CNMI government of any liability.

Funding for these retroactive payments were sourced from poker fee revenues generated on Saipan. As such, only Saipan employees received the payment.

It is believed that Rota employees are entitled to over $1 million in retroactive payment while Tinian personnel are entitled to receive nearly $1 million.