The Executive Branch has already done its part. Now it\u2019s up to the Settlement Fund as to when they will release retirees\u2019 25-percent deferred pensions covering July, August, and September.<\/p>\n
This essentially is what acting press secretary Ivan A. Blanco told media yesterday regarding the issuance of the latest allocation of deferred pension payments owed the Commonwealth\u2019s retirees.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinance already transferred the funds to the Settlement Fund\u2019s bank account. Now we will just have to wait for the Settlement Fund to issue out the payments to the retirees. It is the governor\u2019s hope that the deferred pensions will be released this week, hopefully by Friday [Oct. 10]. Just like last time,\u201d said Blanco.<\/p>\n
He said the release of the deferred payments would bring current payments to retirees to 100 percent. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe government will come in with the other 25 percent. So everything will be 100 percent by Oct. 15. We would have caught up with all the payments by then,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
An email sent to Settlement Fund administrator Lillian M. Pangelinan asking about the release date of the 25-percent deferred pension remained unanswered as of press time. <\/p>\n
Blanco said Gov. Eloy S. Inos is glad that the government is now able to restore the 100 percent pension of retirees.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants to get this out of the way and get the payments up to date. It\u2019s the government\u2019s obligation. He\u2019s happy about this as there\u2019s finally money for the beneficiaries,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The restoration of retirees\u2019 deferred 25-percent pension is a result of the release of $30 million in escrow after the CNMI Lottery Commission and Best Sunshine International Ltd.\u2019s signed a historic $3.14-billion Saipan casino agreement. <\/p>\n
The Hong Kong-based investor has since amended its investment figures and will now plunk down $7.1 bilion for its planned integrated casino resort project on Saipan.<\/p>\n
Retirees\u2019 nine-month payments, covering Oct. 1, 2013, to June 30, 2014, have already been released. The payments for the July to September quarter are expected in early October. Under the original agreement, future disbursements of restored 25 percent pension will be made on a quarterly basis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Executive Branch has already done its part. Now it\u2019s up to the Settlement Fund…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900,4],"tags":[256,733],"class_list":["post-181516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-local-news","tag-casino","tag-settlement-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}