{"id":333381,"date":"2020-11-13T06:02:43","date_gmt":"2020-11-12T20:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=333381"},"modified":"2020-11-13T06:02:43","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T20:02:43","slug":"nmi-dol-to-process-remaining-pua-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/nmi-dol-to-process-remaining-pua-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"NMI DOL to process remaining PUA claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s expiration on Dec. 31.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me clarify that those numbers are coming from our online portal, which could include applications from Palau, Guam, and from CNMI, because we\u2019re on the same sort of a network, and so we\u2019ve had to vet those out. So I would say, accurately, it\u2019s about less than half of those claims that have yet to be adjudicated,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Benavente assures that DOL can adjudicate the majority of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that we know the system a lot better, and we know the issues a lot, we\u2019re more familiar with what people\u2019s challenges are as far as answering the questions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Benavente clarified that the number could be even lower than half of 28,000 because it\u2019s not necessarily applicants but claim issues. For example, one applicant could have many issues that would also need to be adjudicated.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Vicky Benavente<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThere 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\u2019s why it looks like a lot but does that mean 28,000 applicants? No. It means thousands of applicants have several thousand issues,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Benavente said DOL will reopen face-to-face services on Dec. 1 to give them ample time to carry out adjudication. \u201cWe\u2019[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\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cI can\u2019t say I wish I had more, because I\u2019m 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\u2019m grateful for is that many of our department agencies are lending us their personnel, so I\u2019m borrowing them so that they can help us out. I\u2019m really grateful for that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

When it comes to adjudication, Benavente said it could take up to an hour to adjudicate one claim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CNMI Department of Labor assures the community that they will be able to adjudicate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":333382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333381","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}