{"id":352447,"date":"2021-09-28T06:05:12","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T20:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=352447"},"modified":"2021-09-28T06:05:12","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T20:05:12","slug":"benavente-overpayments-in-pua-1-will-be-taken-from-pua-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/benavente-overpayments-in-pua-1-will-be-taken-from-pua-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Benavente: Overpayments in PUA 1 will be taken from PUA 3"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Vicky Benavente<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Those who were overpaid during the first phase of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and are now awaiting their PUA 3 checks will have their overpayments deducted from their PUA 3 benefits, according to CNMI Labor Secretary Vicky Benavente<\/p>\n

This was learned soon after members of the community reached out to Saipan Tribune to share their most recent struggles with the PUA program, one being that their PUA 3 payments were allegedly put on hold because it was just recently discovered that they were overpaid for PUA 1.<\/p>\n

Benavente clarified that because DOL recently went back to audit claims from PUA 1, they have discovered that there were individuals who either knowingly or unknowingly misfiled their earnings, resulting in overpayments.<\/p>\n

Due to these overpayments, CNMI DOL held off on releasing these individuals\u2019 PUA 3 benefits until a payment agreement is set. However, Benavevente said DOL will have to remove at least 50% of the total PUA 1 overpayment from their PUA 3 benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are just finally going back and auditing thousands of PUA 1 claimants who had mistakenly received an overpayment because many times, the PUA claimant would say on their portal, \u2018I earned $0 this week\u2019 and then they upload their paystubs that say they earned $200 that week. That’s what we call misfiled earnings. Unfortunately, the misfiled earnings that they filed for from December to March, that’s a lot of weeks,\u201d Benavente said. \u201cOnce we have processed an overpayment procedure or notice with the claimant, we’re satisfied with that. If they\u2019re still out of work, they\u2019re still at reduced hours, then we’re releasing PUA 3 based on the fact that we already have a written agreement between CNMI DOL and the PUA claimant stating, \u2018Here\u2019s what I’m going to pay on a bi-weekly or monthly basis.\u2019 Many of our claimants are barely making it. If they say they can only make $50 a month, they can pay $50 a month. But here’s the catch. In order to recover PUA benefits that were overpaid, we try to take 50% from their PUA 3 benefits earned and they can pay the 50% on a monthly basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benavente said that, although they have to recover overpaid funds, DOL wants to work out a fair agreement that won\u2019t push claimants further into poverty and won\u2019t jeopardize the relationship between CNMI DOL and the U.S. Department of Labor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CNMI Department of Labor is not trying to delay these funds or push people further into poverty. We’re trying to recover funds as best as we can. But we try to consider the situation like, are they working? Are they on reduced hours? Are they not working? So we can come up with a way to assist claimants with a payment plan that will not push them further below the poverty line, or make things more difficult. If we can make the effort to help the applicant pay back some of these overpayments, then we can show USDOL that we made that effort and they can keep granting us funds for a continuation of PUA or any other type of assistance,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those who were overpaid during the first phase of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":350919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-352447","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\/352447","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=352447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}