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Noncritical employees to be paid Wednesday
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Posted on Jul 17 2011
The cash-strapped CNMI government again failed to make payroll last Friday, at least the 17th time since June 2010 that the Department of Finance failed to issue paychecks to “non-critical” employees.
In an email to the Saipan Tribune, press secretary Angel Demapan confirmed that while noncritical civil servants didn’t get paid, federal and critical staff were able to get their paychecks on time.
“Noncritical services personnel payroll is anticipated to be paid on Wednesday. However, should sufficient funds become available before Wednesday, then payroll will be issued accordingly,” he said.
Demapan said the reasons for the delay in payment of noncritical government employees continue to be the same: limited cash availability in government bank accounts, weekly payments to the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. of $250,000 for arrears that is close to $1 million a month, and payments for the Commonwealth Health Center’s critical needs, among others.
Exacerbating the already sad state of the government’s financial affairs, Demapan said, is that July has three pay periods.
He added that the next payday—July 29—is expected be the most challenging one for the central government.
“As the government continues to tackle current fiscal challenges, government employees are encouraged to anticipate that only critical and federal will be paid on time while noncritical [employees will get paid] on the Wednesday after. Nonetheless, whenever we have additional collections and it is possible to pay earlier [or even on time], we will,” said the press secretary.
To make matters worse, noncritical government employees still waiting for their July 15 paychecks are also subject to a 16-hour cut biweekly and unpaid holidays as part of the administration’s cost cutting measures.
So-called critical government employees include doctors, nurses, police officers, firefighters, and corrections officers. Federal employees, meanwhile, get their salaries directly from U.S. grants and other federal sources and those earmarks cannot be re-appropriated by the local government.
