Teno earmarks funding to resume repatriation program

Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio yesterday moved to resume the government’s repatriation program which has been suspended temporarily because of funding problem, setting aside $75,000 for plane tickets and awarded monetary damages of 29 nonresidents workers who are due for departure.

The Department of Labor and Immigration has put on hold the program for displaced foreign workers as money earmarked to compensate them has been used by the island government for some 500 illegal Chinese immigrants taking refuge on Tinian.

The governor met with Finance Secretary Lucy Nielsen to identify sources of funds to put the repatriation program back on track after Labor and Immigration Secretary Mark Zachares disclosed that his department will have to wait for the reimbursement from the US government before it can continue sending home guest workers.

Although DOLI is still finalizing actual costs, Zachares estimated that the department has spent between $400,000 to half a million dollars since April 17, when the first boatload of illegal immigrants from China arrived on Tinian.

The island government has accepted at least 480 Chinese nationals for the past few weeks who were caught by US Coast Guard while attempting to enter Guam illegally aboard fishing boats.

Because this entails huge expenditures, including overtime pay for CNMI personnel stationed on the Tinian camps, DOLI has reprogrammed some of its funds for its operations there.

Most of the money have been taken out from the deportation fund that the department has set aside for the repatriation program, according to Zachares.

Public Law 11-66, which was signed in February, provides up to $3,000 in compensation to nonresident workers awaiting awarded monetary damages from companies which have closed down without paying their back wages.

More than 50 people, most of them Filipinos, Bangladeshis and Chinese, have so far gone back to their countries under this voluntary program which had been prompted by concerns from U.S. lawmakers on the growing number of displaced guest workers in the Commonwealth.

At least $150,000 have also been spent by the government since the first group of repatriates left the island last March. The funds were largely drawn up from revenues collected by DOLI under the Deportation Fund set up last year by the CNMI.