Finance Secretary Larrisa Larson assured yesterday that the money of all government employees remained in their respective accounts as Typhoon Mangkhut caused banks to shut down their operations, even their ATMs.<\/p>\n
The government released employees\u2019 payroll early in preparation for Mangkhut, with Department of Finance personnel working double time over the weekend. The government\u2019s original payday was supposed to be today.<\/p>\n
However, all banks in the CNMI\u2014particularly Bank of Guam, which is used by the government for the employees\u2019 payroll\u2014closed their operations and secured their ATMs even before Mangkhut barreled through the islands. Employees who are non-BoG account holders received checks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe banks did not zero anyone\u2019s bank deposits out. Their (employees) money was there. The payroll that ran before the storm was done on the weekend but please remember BoG shut down [operations] on Guam,\u201d said Larson.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ran payroll when the bank was already closed for the typhoon. Also, [it\u2019s the] weekend so everything done was specifically because BoG wanted to do its part to get our people paid. So the main server of the bank was down due to the typhoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said what BoG did was issue a memo post of the deposits for the employees\u2019 payroll with the amount showing when the servers went back online. \u201cIt\u2019s my understanding the [servers] were shut down for the storm. Just like everyone else in the CNMI, the bank was impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n
The same process was followed for all employees who received paper checks, Larson said, where the amount showed once the servers were operational. Her payroll staff at Finance was also trying to meet the deadline as Mangkhut loomed over the Marianas.<\/p>\n
She thanked the banks for helping them in getting the government employees paid. \u201cIf people only knew the effort that we went to into this payroll by completing the payroll itself and having to reformat it plus sending it out\u2026if we didn\u2019t run it that day, people would be waiting until [Wednesday]. I\u2019m truly grateful that our bank partners moved mountains to get payroll through even if it is not exactly how everyone was anticipating it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finance Secretary Larrisa Larson assured yesterday that the money of all government employees remained in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[26,22682,51,67],"class_list":["post-284552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cnmi","tag-finance-money","tag-guam","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284552","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\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}