Santos wants to restore ‘even playing field’ on Rota

ROTA—At day’s end with staff gone home, Sen. Teresita Santos (R-Rota) sat quietly alone pondering the “dead in the water” economic activities back home.

She looked at how Tinian has moved the needle of growth against all odds. “Its leadership has a united stand and taken a more proactive common ground to make things happen for their people with civility,” she noted.

“We’ve lost the desire to proactively work a common ground with civility as to head down the path to political and private industry crony partnership to ruin opportunities for our simple folks at home,” she observed.

The vicious environment triggered “evacuation of our people to Guam and elsewhere in recent past knowing that the island they call home has become a hellish hole for them,” she related. The combined political and business cronyism has denied our ordinary people an “even playing field” to earn their dues, she said. “It placed the disadvantaged to seek for some semblance of hope that forcibly included evacuation from home”.

“It’s painful addressing this issue knowing our reputation as an island community that is friendly and generous with friends and one another,” she said. “It is more the reason to reset the button of cultural camaraderie or unity and generosity where we extend the olive branch to our very own and begin anew.” Santos said the prevailing attitude of destruction has viciously shut the doors of opportunity for wealth and jobs creation. “It’s the concept of finding investments that eventually create jobs for our people,” she noted.

“Moreover, it is even more painful meeting our people away from Rota who yearn to return home but there are no opportunities here where they could earn a decent living,” she pointed out. “This must shift where we work the common ground with a sense of civility dedicating our collective effort to re-establishing ‘home sweet home’ once more.” This simply means joining hands “spreading the time-honored sense of compassion, generosity and outstanding fellowship among our people,” Santos said.

“The outmigration of our people is a dislocation in the sense that among the many who have left is a drain of resources we need here at home,” she noted. “For all we know quite of number of them could have begun small family businesses that provide job opportunities for our people an reviving the local economy”.

“It’s heartbreaking listening to our people elsewhere who speak of a good place with decent schools, hospital, jobs, and community where their kids could excel,” she related. “Why can’t we rework this so that in fact there are opportunities for families and the disadvantaged by empowering them with an ‘even playing field’.”

“It’s time to do this so our people need not find returning home a bitter experience,” she said. “Coming home should be one sweet and enthusiastic experience to see the people and island where one’s anchor was established,” Santos related. “We should be mindful that they are our people.”