More unemployment money is making its way to Guam bank accounts…with another $9.8 million dollars batched this week.
This money is in addition to some $4.7 million in LWA payments released this week.
This new batch covers mostly PUA and some leftover FPUC payments up to and including October 1st.
It should hit bank accounts by early next week, right about the same time GDOL plans to batch another group of LWA and PUA payments.
GDOL director David Dell’Isola says they’re continuing to batch every week through Christmas to plow through October and November claims, including LWA top-ups.
“The last batch was just under 4,000 claimants, so don’t worry if you didn’t get it and you’re calling us up and saying ‘am I going to get it?’ or ‘what’s this and that’…we’re auditing and trying to be careful with balancing and getting this out as quickly as possible. So this coming Tuesday, we’ll batch another LWA and we’ll be able to get more people out. This last batch was kind of a sampling batch to make sure the program was working well,” Dell’Isola said.
The PUA unemployment program is due to expire at the end of this month and there’s no approved second relief plan from the feds, yet.
Dell’Isola says if there is an extension of the current programs, it would be as easy as flipping a light switch to keep the money flowing to residents.
“It looks like I’ll spend about half a billion dollars at the end of this program and I still have over $400 million left over from our budget so if they (the federal government) let me continue with that, that will probably bring us home (to the end of the pandemic) too.”
Dell’Isola says he’s having a meeting with USDOL to figure out the next steps and how to sunset the unemployment benefits program on Guam…if there’s no federal extension.
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