The NMI Retirement Fund has threatened to cut the pension benefits of some 30 retirees following discovery that they have been \u201cdouble dipping\u201d into the government\u2019s coffers.<\/p>\n
This refers to retirees who have been re-employed in the government and are getting salary and earning retirement benefits anew while receiving their monthly pensions at the same time.<\/p>\n
Fund administrator Karl T. Reyes said yesterday that notices were sent to those concerned, prompting these individuals to appeal their cases. He declined to identify these individuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a case of double dipping. There\u2019s plenty of them and some of them had appealed and asked for a hearing,\u201d said Reyes.<\/p>\n
He said the Fund board of trustees agreed to grant the retirees a chance to air their side in a hearing. The hearing will be held possibly next week.<\/p>\n
Reyes said the Fund would ask the employees to either choose their job and stop receiving pension or keep their pension but resign from government work. <\/p>\n
He said these retirees are currently employed in the Legislature, Department of Public Health, Mayor\u2019s Office, and the Department of Labor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe board\u2019s decision is to hold a hearing,\u201d said Reyes.<\/p>\n
Retirees receive their pension pay every 15 days. There are some 2,389 retirees in the CNMI, including 600 surviving spouses and dependents. <\/p>\n
The Fund releases about $938,000 solely for pensions every 15 days. Reyes said this amount would go up by January 2005 in view of a 2 to 2.7 percent implementation of cost of living allowance. COLA is given to retirees aged 55 and above.<\/p>\n
He said the COLA adjustment for next year would translate to an additional $80,000 payment for the retirees. <\/p>\n
Double dipping drains the government’s retirement system funds as it allows the employer, which is the government, to pay the member or a retiree twice in terms of pension benefits and salaries.<\/p>\n
Currently, the CNMI laws only allow \u201cdouble dipping\u201d in certain professions such as teaching and medical job where there are a shortage of personnel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The NMI Retirement Fund has threatened to cut the pension benefits of some 30 retirees following discovery that they have been \u201cdouble dipping\u201d into the government\u2019s coffers.<\/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-86018","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\/86018","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=86018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}