The NMI Retirement Fund Board of Trustees has approved the re-employment of three government retirees, including Cultural and Community Affairs Secretary Juan L. Babauta.<\/p>\n
Fund administrator Karl T. Reyes said Babauta, a former public school principal, and two other retirees, Monica Lizama, and Jose R. Bermudez, can continue their work in government. <\/p>\n
Lizama reportedly works at the Legislature while Bermudez is with the Department of Public Works.<\/p>\n
The board, during its meeting Thursday said, that a number of government retirees have applied for exemption from re-employment restrictions. <\/p>\n
While the board expressed no outright objection to the exemption requests, it expressed concern of it becoming an issue of \u201cdouble dipping.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, the Fund said it approved the exemption request of Miriam Seman and Placido Tagabuel. Both are reportedly working at the Legislature.<\/p>\n
Reyes said that exemption requests have not really been rampant, noting that he could only recall a total of eight retirees being granted the opportunity to return to government work ever since he assumed his position in April 2002.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d say it\u2019s minimal,\u201d said Reyes.<\/p>\n
He also said that the Fund board\u2019s approval of such requests is a mere formality since they have been prior-approved by the governor.<\/p>\n
Concerned retirees usually submit their petition to the governor who would then forward his decision and recommendation to the Fund\u2019s board.<\/p>\n
Exemption for re-employment of government retirees is usually allowed for teachers, doctors, nurses, and other professionals in the fields that have limited pool of personnel.<\/p>\n
Other government retirees need to get the governor\u2019s approval to get exemption.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Fund board member Bertha Deleon Guerrero said the approval of the three retirees recently would not be a case of double dipping since their pensions would be suspended as soon as they resume work.<\/p>\n
Double dipping drains the funds of the local retirement system since it allows the government to pay the Fund member twice in terms of pension benefits and salaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The NMI Retirement Fund Board of Trustees has approved the re-employment of three government retirees, including Cultural and Community Affairs Secretary Juan L. Babauta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81003","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}