Monday, October 27, 2008
Local
Monday, October 27, 2008

Garment Oversight Board finally closing Friday
Uncashed settlement checks to go to a Trust Fund
By Ferdie de la Torre
Reporter

The Garment Oversight Board is closing this Friday, Oct. 31, and all the money coming from the class lawsuit settlement checks that the garment workers failed to cash will go to a Garment Workers Trust Fund, according to GOB chairman Timothy Bellas.

Bellas told Saipan Tribune that Friday is GOB's closing date therefore it will be the last day that the board will do anything with any of the settlement checks.

He said the proposal, however, is that they're going to continue the financial aspect until Dec. 31, 2008 to allow any of the checks that are still outstanding to be cleared.

Bellas said the uncashed money will then be transferred to a Garment Workers Trust Fund for a year and then after that the money will be given to a charity.

“We've tried extensively by asking the court to extend the term of GOB three times in order to get much of these money into the hands of the garment workers as we can,” he said.

The former judge said the GOB can only can go by the addresses of the workers that were given to them.

“We've had a lot of situation where the workers might be here but the addresses they gave us were back in China, or Philippines, Bangladesh,” he said.

Bellas said they sent the checks for the addresses that they have so the relatives of the workers sent the checks back to the workers here in the CNMI.

“So they come in and they say 'oh here's my check' and it's more than 60 days. So we've been re-issuing checks,” he said.

Bellas said every time GOB's term gets extended, its operation expenses continue.

“We're sort of using the money for operating expenses. And so we want to go ahead and use it for a good purpose of giving it to the workers or giving it to charity,” he added.

GOB was set up pursuant to the $20-million settlement agreement in the class action against CNMI's garment industry. It's purpose was to oversee the monitoring program of the garment industry.

Before the remaining settlement money was transferred to GOB last year, a company that was tasked to distribute the funds to some current and former garment workers informed the U.S. District Court for the NMI that it successfully mailed out almost 29,800 checks to individuals located in 17 countries.

The company said the total cash distribution represented by the checks is $2.3 million out of an initial net fund of $4 million.

In July 2008, GOB claimed it has sent 11,353 new checks and would be sending 1,031 more checks to some current and former garment workers.

The 12,384 checks are worth $1,599.495, GOB then reported.

On July 21, 2008, the federal court granted GOB's request for final extension of its term (Oct. 31, 2008) in order for the board account the last $1.6 million in checks.