Deputy Secretary Cinta M. Kaipat said the list of claims was assembled from the information provided by those who registered with the Department of Labor at Garapan park last summer and also includes those who registered with the federal ombudsman in the summer of 2007.
Kaipat’s list includes workers who were employed by garment industry subcontractors.
These subcontractors were “virtually indistinguishable from the main garment factories that they served,” Kaipat said.
Last week Friday, Bellas announced that the Garment Workers Trust Fund still has $600,000 available to assist former garment workers who are still on Saipan and are facing hardships.
He said the $600,000 is leftover money from the checks distributed to the workers as settlement in the class action against garment factories.
“Under the terms of the settlement agreement, it is supposed to go to help workers if we can. If we can’t, then it goes to charity,” he said.
In the past two years, Kaipat pointed out, the Department of Labor has adjudicated wage claims made by former garment workers whose cases were filed long before the current administration.
The adjudication of these claims has made it possible for garment workers to be compensated from the trust fund.
Nearly all of the cases on the list submitted by Kaipat were filed in the years 1997 through 2004.
Many of the employers had left the CNMI before the claims were filed, and this administration’s attempts to collect against bonds, if the bonding company is still in existence, are likely barred by the statute of limitations, Kaipat reported.
She said the department is now entirely current on labor cases and agency cases.
All cases from 2007 and prior years have been adjudicated, and the department has finished all but a few cases filed in 2008.
So the department has determined all of the wage claims of workers from the garment industry.
The trust fund is accepting applications until Aug. 15, 2009 from former garment workers who want to avail of the funding.
Applicants need to send their applications either in Chinese or English to GWTF, P.O. Box 505943, Saipan, MP 96950.
