The NMI Retirement Fund board is determined to stop the pension payments of any government retiree found working again in public office, regardless of their new positions.<\/p>\n
Fund administrator Karl T. Reyes said that the Fund board made it clear during a meeting Thursday evening that the law against double dipping would be strictly implemented.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to stop the pension once we receive documents that they\u2019re hired again,\u201d said Reyes.<\/p>\n
He said the law only exempts for two years four job positions: teachers, nurses, doctors, and certified public accountants. This means that employees in these job categories can double-dip for only two years. After two years, if they continue working, their pension will be cut.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re not one of these, you can\u2019t go back to government and receive pension at the same time,\u201d said Reyes.<\/p>\n
He said retirees who have become elected as lawmakers have voluntarily informed the Fund to stop their pension.<\/p>\n
He said the Fund has not determined yet if there are retirees who got hired in the Executive Branch.<\/p>\n
He said it usually takes about three weeks before personnel records get processed for employment.<\/p>\n
He said the Fund would know who are getting their new salaries from documents submitted by the Office of Personnel Management.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d immediately know if a retiree gets paid anew. It reflects in our records here. In that case, the retiree would have to choose either to leave work or stop getting pension,\u201d said Reyes.<\/p>\n
He said the Fund has had many retirees complaining over this matter, resulting in the holding of public hearings.<\/p>\n
As of October last year, the Fund had sent out notices of violation to 30 \u201cdouble dipping\u201d retirees. <\/p>\n
Double dipping drains the government\u2019s 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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The NMI Retirement Fund board is determined to stop the pension payments of any government retiree found working again in public office, regardless of their new positions.<\/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-97935","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\/97935","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=97935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}