The donation — unanimously recommended by the fund trustees on Sept. 25, 2009 — was part of the motion filed by trust fund chairman Timothy H. Bellas which was incorporated in the submitted “Third Interim Request for Approval of Fees and Expenses.”
The trust fund received a total of 1,313 applications from former garment workers.
Records showed 991 applications were denied for monetary assistance because the “trustees do not believe that assistance for general and daily living expenses meet the criteria of the type of hardship for which the applications were originally solicited.”
$100 each for 63 applications that seek repatriation assistance to return to their country of origin, on top of a non-refundable one-way air ticket.
“The trustees felt that many of the [44 applications for medical assistance] were incomplete due to the lack of medical verification,” but “these applications were provisionally approved subject to supplemental information.”
The approved 215 applications were “submitted through the CNMI Department of Labor and the office of the federal ombudsman, on behalf of garment workers with unpaid wages who are still located within CNMI.”
The trust fund proposes to keep $25,000 in the investment account for the 44 workers who submitted documentation for medical assistance.
“Due to variations in destination, the total estimated amount for the repatriation plan will be approximately $65,300 including the $100 travel allowance per worker,” the approved motion stated.
The trustees further proposed to retain the $21,451.79 in the operations account to finance the remaining operational expenses of the trust fund “and any residual repatriation request from CNMI Labor until the fund is exhausted or Dec. 31, 2009, whichever occurs first.”
The maximum amount to be distributed to former garment workers totaled $165,000, records showed.
Bellas informed the court the total funding on hand is $722,873.18.
