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‘All of $1.7M CW fund distributed’
Responding to queries on the expenditure of contract worker-related fees meant to spur the training of the local workforce, CNMI Department of Labor Secretary Edith DeLeon Guerrero shared a chart breaking down distributions approved for the local trades school and Northern Marianas College this year, revealing remaining funds at zero dollars.
The last drawdown to the Northern Marianas Trades Institute was for $155,898 on July 1, 2016.
The CW fund was appropriated $1.7 million this fiscal year.
Total drawdowns for NMTI are at $897,374. The 10 other drawdowns range from $30,000 to $87,000.
Labor said $193,000 was also approved for the Department of Commerce’s 2016 Prevailing Wage and Workforce Assessment Survey and $607,766 have been approved for the local college, which prepares and presents a report on the use of these funds every year.
The release of the CW fund disbursement monitoring sheet comes after Rep. Angel Demapan (R-Saipan) wrote a July 5 letter to DeLeon Guerrero on the status of these funds, after hearing word that the depletion of funds may drastically reduce or cancel NMTI’s classes.
He had asked to delineate the expenditure of these funds from the beginning of the current fiscal year to date.
DeLeon Guerrero said yesterday that the provide chart showed “amounts I have approved however whether or not the exact amounts were transferred to the receiving institution as I had approved can best be provided by” the Department of Finance and/or the Office of Management and Budget.
Demapan, for his part, said the Labor secretary informed him Wednesday afternoon that she just approved the disbursement of funds to NMTI. This approval fulfills NMTI’s approved share of the CW fee funds, he said.
