Govt enumerators to visit businesses as early as Thursday

Private sector businesses and organizations should start expecting government enumerators at their facilities as early as Thursday, as part of the “2011 CNMI Prevailing Wage and Workforce Assessment Study,” which comes weeks after the Saipan Chamber of Commerce completed its own prevailing wage survey.

Government agencies and organizations will also be covered by the survey, led by the Department of Commerce’s Central Statistics Division.

Enumerators started training this week for the government study. Training is expected to wrap up today.

Acting Commerce secretary Sixto Igisomar said yesterday that the study has two purposes, including “comprehensively determining the prevailing wage rate in each occupation that exists” in the economy.

Igisomar said it will also assess the current workforce “to determine the types and level of skills held by the current employed workforce to help shape the types of education and training needed to fully utilize our existing labor resources.”

CSD director Ivan Blanco, when asked for more information, said “enumerators will hit the field this Thursday and onwards for three to four weeks.”

Igisomar, in separate letters yesterday to private and public sector executives, managers, and owners, said each enumerator visiting their offices will have an official badge that Commerce issued.

He said enumerators must introduce themselves properly as an authorized person to collect data from businesses or organizations for the wage survey.

Igisomar said that business data obtained by the Central Statistics Division will be held at the “utmost confidence at all times.” He said enumerators have been trained and sworn to keep all collected data in confidence.

Igisomar said the individual business data collected from each of the businesses and organizations will be processed, analyzed, and published only in summary statistics form for the study’s purposes.

Results of the study will be published in hard copy and e-copy formats and made available on the Commerce website for everyone interested in the results.

Igisomar said enumerators will give businesses more details on the study when they visit their offices.

The government starts its prevailing wage study just days after the U.S. Department of Labor accepted the Saipan Chamber of Commerce’s prevailing wage survey. U.S. Labor’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification certified a labor condition application for an electrical engineer. This LCA is the required first step in applying for H-1B and a number of other employment-based visas.

The U.S. Department of the Interior funded the Chamber survey with a $16,500 grant.

The Fitial administration applied for an over $40,000 grant with the U.S. Department of Labor for the survey but the administration has yet to hear from U.S. Labor on their application.

Meanwhile, Commerce’s Blanco had said there are an estimated 1,400 business establishments in the CNMI with some 16,000 employees. He said private and public sectors are covered in the survey scope.

For public sector entities, Commerce’s CSD is working closely with Department of Finance to gather administrative data that will be used for the survey report.

The public is urged to contact CSD director Ivan Blanco at 664-3023 or by sending email to director.csd@commerce.gov.mp.