Some lawmakers don\u2019t know the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program process, yet are quick to criticize to score political points, according to Gov. Ralph DLG Torres last Friday.<\/p>\n
Rather than finding out what\u2019s going on and looking into how can they help, some legislators criticize the process instead, he added in response to a question raised during his regular radio briefing.<\/p>\n
This comes in the wake of the U.S. Department of Labor Region 6 Office commending the CNMI Department of Labor for its implementation of PUA program, where it credited the CNMI Labor for implementing what it termed as seven \u201cbest practices.\u201d Some lawmakers have criticized CNMI Labor for allegedly being slow in handling and processing PUA benefits.<\/p>\n
Citing the $481 million American Rescue Plan Act funds, Torres said they wish they could spend it in so many different avenues and start construction immediately. \u201cBut this is a process to that. PUA is no different,\u201d Torres pointed out.<\/p>\n
With both PUA and ARPA, Torres said they were given guidelines by the federal government and that they will follow to those guidelines. He said they want to disseminate as much and as fast as they can, but there are federal guidelines to follow.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s misinformation. Sure, we weren\u2019t the fastest, and I want to admit, but at the end of the day, there\u2019s a process,\u201d Torres said. <\/p>\n
He said if they were to process every applicant that came in, they would not be getting this kind of acknowledgment from USDOL. <\/p>\n
Torres said this is a prime example of where some legislators should look at the issue, offer solutions, and follow through. \u201cSo you can help make that process better rather than just criticizing what\u2019s going on, and then later on, coming back to find out that our practice is actually the best practice that\u2019s been recommended by U.S. Department of Labor,\u201d the governor said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some lawmakers don\u2019t know the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program process, yet are quick to criticize…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":331971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355403","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}