Bellas: No new $145 GOB checks coming

In response to a recent letter to the editor, Timothy Bellas, chairman of the Garment Oversight Board, dispelled rumors that some former factory employees are owed an added $145 above the payments they are due to receive.

“There is no truth to the report that another $145 check will be sent our after the current distribution,” Bellas writes in a letter to Joaquin Romolor, a Portland, Ore. man whose letter the Saipan Tribune published Aug.1.

The GOB is tasked with monitoring the garment industry and distributing the class-action settlement payment its laborers won in a landmark suit over working conditions. Recently, the court extended the term the GOB has to distribute the settlement checks to Oct. 31 2008.

Romolor had written to the newspaper saying his sister-in-law in China is still awaiting her check from the GOB, owed she after worked in a garment factory. The letter suggests the board has ignored his calls and notes she needs the money for an operation on her diseased kidney.

“Do you think ignoring my calls or turning away people will make you look good in the public?” Romolor wrote, later urging Bellas to “take action as a man of justice and peace.”

Bellas, in a same day response, says that had Romolor sent the letter directly to the board’s office, it would have dealt with his concerns. In addition, Bellas says he has not ignored Romolor’s calls.

The GOB, he adds, has faced several logistical problems linked to the distribution of the checks, such as checks sent to the wrong address and checks that were never delivered to workers by the local “agents” they designated to receive them on their behalf. Chinese settlement recipients have also reported, he notes, that banks in China have in some cases refused to cash the settlement checks.

“It is unfortunate, but there is no doubt that there will be people who, while they were garment workers for the period involved, may not receive any money from the settlement fund,” Bellas writes.

In the case of Romolor’s sister-in-law, Bellas notes that the address she supplied to receive her $128.62 settlement check was incorrect and that the check was consequently returned to the board without ever being cashed.

Moreover, Bellas dispels a rumor circulated in a local Chinese newspaper that some workers will receive an added bonus check after the initial class-action suit payment.

Every party involved in the settlement, he adds, must “understand that the GOB has a limited term and we must complete this process once and for all” and that former workers “need to cash the checks as soon as possible.”