The Department of Labor was not fully operational for two days\u2014Tuesday and Wednesday\u2014due to lack of power and water following the onslaught of Typhoon Tingting Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no access to the computer. There\u2019s no air-conditioning. So even if the employees come, we can\u2019t really do the work,\u201d said DOL deputy secretary Andrew Salas.<\/p>\n
He said the department had to close the office after 11 am on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, he said, DOL could only be opened for a few hours in the morning. \u201cPeople were sweating. We felt sorry for them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Several dozens of people have been going to the department after the typhoon to file work permit applications, submit requirements, attend hearings, or follow up on their applications but without getting served mainly due to lack of power.<\/p>\n
Salas called on employers to continue to submit complete work permit applications to ensure fast processing. He said several people have been doing it and are grateful for the quick release of permits.<\/p>\n
\u201cContinue to submit complete applications. Bring all the necessary documents and we can give you your permits in 10 days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He noted that DOL is now just processing June 2004 applications. \u201cAll the rest had been done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Salas earlier projected to implement a 10-day permit processing beginning May 1 this year. But this was not officially implemented for lack of a necessary legislation.<\/p>\n
Salas earlier counted on Rep. Joseph Deleon Guerrero to introduce a bill that aims to authorize DOL to cut its processing period from 30 days to 10 days.<\/p>\n
When asked yesterday, Salas said that, although it was not introduced by Guerrero, such provision was incorporated in a related bill filed recently by Rep. Ray Yumul. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Department of Labor was not fully operational for two days\u2014Tuesday and Wednesday\u2014due to lack of power and water following the onslaught of Typhoon Tingting Monday.<\/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-82304","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\/82304","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=82304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}