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Fund board laments arrears of govt agencies
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Posted on May 02 2012
By Clarissa V. David
Reporter
Reporter
The NMI Retirement Fund board is concerned about the delayed payments and deficiencies in employer contributions of several government offices and autonomous agencies.
While most agencies make payments, some of them are “not caught up” with their outstanding contributions while others do not pay the contribution rate of 60.8686 percent imposed by the Fund at the beginning of fiscal year 2012 or last October, according to Fund administrator Richard S. Villagomez.
Villagomez noted during yesterday’s regular meeting that some of these employers have to be reminded about the need to pay their contribution arrears.
For example, the contribution arrears of the Public School System now amount to about $28.6 million and still continues to accrue since they only pay a 30 percent rate, said Villagomez.
If a PSS employee wants to take out his or her retirement, Villagomez said they would write to Education Commissioner Rita A. Sablan to inform them that they have to pay the deficient contributions attributable to that employee before retirement.
The board instructed Villagomez to “wake up” the attention of PSS since it is lagging with both employee and employer contributions by several pay periods now.
On the other hand, the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. pays at the same rate as the central government and Villagomez said “we obviously don’t agree with that position. There’s a law and the law says you pay the actual rate and that rate is 60 percent.”
The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., meanwhile, wasn’t paying anything at all and did so only when the Fund notified it “to pay up especially the life and health insurance premiums or else their employees’ coverage will be terminated.”
The Commonwealth Development Authority also pays less than the 60 percent actuarial rate contribution-or 37 percent.
Villagomez said these contributions are “pooled” into the GHLI account and get periodically remitted to Aetna to cover payments.
“If one of the agencies don’t remit, we know that right away. But the coverage doesn’t lapse right away because it’s part of the policy,” added the administrator.
