Finance Secretary Fermin M. Atalig maintained yesterday that the money used to pay off the retirees\u2019 cost of living allowance this year came from the government\u2019s General Fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere else are we getting it but from the revenues? It\u2019s from BGRT. It\u2019s from other taxes and revenues that get into the General Fund,\u201d said Atalig.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Benigno R. Fitial recently wrote Atalig asking the latter to show the source of funds used to pay off the retirees\u2019 COLA. Fitial wants \u201ca full accounting of the source of funds used to release the NMI Retirement Fund\u2019s cost of living allowances, which were long overdue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Atalig said yesterday that he has drafted a formal response to Fitial.<\/p>\n
Gov. Juan N. Babauta had authorized early this month the release of the 2005 COLA amounting to $687,686. It was reportedly the first time for the government since 1998 to make such payment.<\/p>\n
The Fund said that since 1998, it stopped receiving COLA remittance from the $2 million government appropriation through Public Law 8-31. It said this was one of the many measures that the Legislature passed without identifying any sources of funds.<\/p>\n
In the past six years, the Fund said that it had tapped the active members\u2019 retirement contribution to pay off retirees\u2019 COLA.<\/p>\n
Only this year did the Fund Board decide to hold off the COLA payment until the government remits the appropriate funding.<\/p>\n
Retirees usually receive COLA beginning January of each year.<\/p>\n
Critics said that the governor authorized the COLA release only because it is an election year. Babauta is seeking re-election this year. Fitial is running against him.<\/p>\n
COLA, which is currently at 2.7 percent of retirees\u2019 pension, is given annually to retirees aged 55 years and older.<\/p>\n
Fund administrator Karl Reyes said there are 1,303 retirees who are qualified to receive COLA this year. The Fund has some 2,000 retiree members.<\/p>\n
COLA is released together with the retirees\u2019 pension every pay period. The Fund said it releases $1.1 million for the retirees\u2019 compensation every pay period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finance Secretary Fermin M. Atalig maintained yesterday that the money used to pay off the retirees\u2019 cost of living allowance this year came from the government\u2019s General Fund.<\/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-94710","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\/94710","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=94710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}