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NMTI offers CUC potential training program for employees
Officials of the Northern Marianas Trade Institute meet with the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. board and management to partner up in an apprenticeship program that will help the utilities agency have trained employees from the trade school. (Jayson Camacho)
NMTI’s acting chief executive officer Agnes McPhetres and education director Victorino S. Cepeda attended yesterday’s meeting of the CUC board to promote training programs that could be tailored specifically for CUC employees.
McPhetres said they could offer training classes for CUC employees if an existing law is amended to allow NMTI to provide sole vocational technical training.
McPhetres later told Saipan Tribune that they attended the meeting because they want to offer a potential partnership under a memorandum of understanding that will potentially allow NMTI to train current and future employees of CUC.
“We came to speak to CUC to tell them of our programs at NMTI that we offer and will help CUC in their employment services that are focused on power generation and electrical and mechanical classes that our school offers,” McPhetres said.
According to her, they have students that are nearly graduating on courses that cater to utilities and electricity.
“Students that are ready to be completed in these areas are far better than the current employees that CUC has and maybe come into a process of training existing employees at CUC,” McPhetres told the CUC board.
McPhetres said that CUC and NMTI could also work together, where their students could enter into an apprenticeship program of 2,000 hours and work at the agency.
She said she still needs to meet with the CNMI Workforce Investment Agency on the apprenticeship program but they have already prepared a memorandum of agreement for CUC.
McPhetres noted that they are working with the Public School System’s high schools in making 11th to 12th grade students join the apprenticeship program and introduce them to vocational programs.
CUC board chair David J. Sablan agreed that NMTI should be the sole vocational trade school and that he is amenable to a partnership with NMTI, but NMTI would still have to be under the Department of Labor, in which McPhetres said they are working on the matter with the Legislature.
McPhetres said that they also want to look into CUC’s water and wastewater areas for possible training opportunities.
