The Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved the Lost Wages Assistance program for the CNMI to provide an additional $300 in unemployment assistance for those who lost their jobs as result of the COVID-19 pandemic. <\/p>\n
However, in a previous interview with CNMI Department of Labor Secretary Vicky Benavente, she said the CNMI is still awaiting FEMA\u2019s decision on the CNMI\u2019s request for a waiver on the matching fund requirement. The program will provide 75% of the funds that will be disbursed, while the CNMI is required to foot 25% of the amount. The CNMI has asked FEMA to waive that requirement and provide 100% of the funds.<\/p>\n
According to FEMA\u2019s website, FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor approved the CNMI for a FEMA grant under the Lost Wages Assistance program to allow the CNMI to provide $300 per week on top of regular unemployment benefit to those unemployed due to COVID-19.<\/p>\n
FEMA is working with Gov. Ralph DLG Torres to implement a system to make the funding available to CNMI residents.<\/p>\n
Back on Aug. 8, 2020, President Donald Trump made available up to $44 billion from FEMA\u2019s Disaster Relief Fund to provide financial assistance to Americans who have lost wages due to the COVID-19 pandemic. <\/p>\n
The CNMI agreed to administer a lost wages program for its citizens who are unemployed due to COVID-19.<\/p>\n
The administration had a ballpark estimate of $17 million to $25 million funding needed to match the federal assistance program.<\/p>\n
Since applying for the program, Benavente said the CNMI government has been looking at where to source the hundred dollars and has discussed the challenge with its FEMA partners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved the Lost Wages Assistance program for the CNMI…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":334164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[493,257],"class_list":["post-334155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-fema","tag-nmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334155","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=334155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}