Flashback May 14, 1999-2002

Fair wage act pushed back[/B]

The implementation of the Resident Workers Fair Compensation Act may be delayed further after the Attorney General’s Office pushed back the adoption of the rules and regulations that would put into motion Public Law 11-74. “The regulations currently promulgated will not be adopted without significant modifications, therefore, these will be repromulgated,” said Nancy Gottfried, assistant attorney general.
[B] BOE backs moves to mandate kindergarten[/B]

The Board of Education will lend support to a legislative initiative that would seek to amend the CNMI Constitution to make the free education available even to five-year-old children in order to ensure the continuity of the kindergarten program. In yesterday’s meeting, board members gave their nod to a proposal supporting a legislation that is being prepared by Rep. Malua Peters to amend the Constitution.

The increasing cost of providing temporary shelter to some 500 illegal Chinese immigrants on Tinian continues to drain local resources as their fate remains uncertain nearly a month after the first boatload arrived on the island. Likewise, a scheduled repatriation of the first batch of undocumented aliens has been called off at the last minute on the heels of heightening tension between the United States and China as a result of the air strike in Yugoslavia.

Better child care at CHC[/B]

Problems associated with the persistent increase in the number of critically-ill children in the Northern Marianas will decline once the Department of Public Health sets up its own state-of-the-art Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. The proposed setting up of PICU earned the support of health officials amid problems on the increasing number of pediatric patients who were forced to be sent off-island despite their inability to travel.

The government has enough funds to be disbursed when the initial batch of tax rebates and refunds are mailed out, Finance Secretary Lucy Dlg. Nielsen disclosed Friday. Ms. Nielsen is confident that rebates will be released in the next several weeks as the Revenue and Taxation Division completes its review of income tax returns filed by taxpayers.

With Saipan’s water woes expected to last until early August, the Commonwealth Utilities Commission is recruiting the island’s educators to help alleviate the crisis. Last week, the utility’s Project WET (Water for Education for Teachers) went into full gear as it visited Tanapag Elementary School where faculty was in eager anticipation of that morning’s lessons on the valuable resource.

Cing resigns from Senate leadership[/B]

Enraged over what he perceived as an insult to him and his committee, Senate Vice President David M. Cing expressed his intention yesterday to resign from the upper chamber’s leadership, saying, “Can I trust my leadership [again] after what happened?” This comes soon after Senate Floor Leader Joaquin G. Adriano made a motion to recall and reconsider an earlier vote they made rejecting the nomination of former senator Edward U. Maratita to the Board of Directors of the Commonwealth Development Authority.
[B] Senate rejects Maratita for CDA[/B]

In an unprecedented move, the Senate twice rejected yesterday the nomination of former senator Edward U. Maratita to sit on the Board of Directors of the Commonwealth Development Authority. The rejections stem primarily from an existing loan that Maratita had taken out from the CDA. Due to confidentiality requirements, the loan amount was not made public during the session.

In another disclosure that depicts the poor condition of public water in the Commonwealth, the Division of Environmental Quality yesterday said there is no single public water system CNMI-wide that performs lead and copper monitoring, which have put consumers at risk of using contaminated drinking water. All the public water systems in the Commonwealth, including those of water companies, were not actually monitoring lead and copper contaminants in their respective water systems, even if such monitoring has been locally mandated by the CNMI Drinking Water Regulations since 1994, said DEQ environmental scientist David Schmidt.