NMI DOL to process remaining PUA claims

The CNMI Department of Labor assures the community that they will be able to adjudicate the thousands of remaining Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims before the program’s expiration on Dec. 31.

According to Labor Secretary Vicky Benavente, the Hire Marianas online portal shows that there are about 28,000 PUA claims that remain to be adjudicated but only about half of that number need actual adjudication.

“Let me clarify that those numbers are coming from our online portal, which could include applications from Palau, Guam, and from CNMI, because we’re on the same sort of a network, and so we’ve had to vet those out. So I would say, accurately, it’s about less than half of those claims that have yet to be adjudicated,” she said.

Benavente assures that DOL can adjudicate the majority of them.

“Now that we know the system a lot better, and we know the issues a lot, we’re more familiar with what people’s challenges are as far as answering the questions,” she said.

Benavente clarified that the number could be even lower than half of 28,000 because it’s not necessarily applicants but claim issues. For example, one applicant could have many issues that would also need to be adjudicated.

Vicky Benavente

“There are claimants that have four or five issues. So that could be one payment with five issues or 10 issues. It really depends if their application was processed in a way that blocks them from moving forward to the payment cycle. So that’s why it looks like a lot but does that mean 28,000 applicants? No. It means thousands of applicants have several thousand issues,” she said.

Benavente said DOL will reopen face-to-face services on Dec. 1 to give them ample time to carry out adjudication. “We’[d be] closed for 45 days, because we want to adjudicate all of those issues out of there and get the applicants their benefits as quickly as possible” she said.

Benavente said DOL currently has close to 100 personnel working adjudication but they have been getting help from other government agencies in terms of manpower. “I can’t say I wish I had more, because I’m looking at the limitations of our budget, our administrative costs, as granted by U.S. Department of Labor. We were allowed to hire this much with this amount of money. And so what I’m grateful for is that many of our department agencies are lending us their personnel, so I’m borrowing them so that they can help us out. I’m really grateful for that,” she said.

When it comes to adjudication, Benavente said it could take up to an hour to adjudicate one claim.