BSI investments

Boasting of BSI’s investment, CEO Mark Brown said the firm has spent some $600 million here. My immediate reaction was, “Where?” Servile lapdogs in the lower chamber braved intelligent looks but none raised relevant queries to secure how the money was spent.

The anomaly, sir, isn’t rocket science stuff to ponder upon. It instantly begs the query: Where was this large sum of money invested? Did it all go to the one-story Imperial Pacific Resort slated for soft opening sometime in February?

Please, get off your high horse and stop bluffing us with overblown figures easily dismantled with common sense. Eh, we know our simple arithmetic too!

Then he related the firm is up to 57 percent compliant under an agreement with the Lottery Commission to proactively hire and train local residents comprising of at least 65 percent of all employees.

The firm is further required to work with the local labor department “develop an annual plan evaluating employment needs, local conditions and challenges, current residency status of employees” and a “proactive plan to achieve the resident employment objective.” A plan was recently submitted requiring ocular review. The proactive plan “shall include, if required, the funding and provision of necessary training through local educational and trade institutions to provide required skills.”

It would be good to see what plans were formulated and implemented with NMC and NMI Trade Institute for the education and training of interested locals. Is this something you could share with us?

Brown boasts the company offers the highest salaries and benefits in the private sector. “And we want to remain the leaders in that respect,” he said. That isn’t quite the case, sir! Buckle down with your HR people to explore whether it is fact or fiction that employees have been called into a meeting to inform them of salary adjustments downwards. Through the grapevine, some have quit while others await disposition contemplating a class action lawsuit. It’s good to know if this is fact or fiction. If it’s a fact, then an explanation is merited!

Why would BSI rob employees of their empowerment to live with common decency? You see the unintended consequence of salary reduction is the forced condition where employees return once more to food stamps and housing vouchers in order to survive. Why hire them if you can’t maintain what you started them out with? This is where federal labor ought to step in and probe the issue.

With salary reduction, can any of them really use their reduced salaries to take out real estate loans at local banks to build the first family home? It’s the litmus test to see improvements in the local economy—people building or buying new homes—amidst healthy growth.

What about foreigners hired that allegedly came in as tourists? Why is homeland security mute on the need to probe this issue? In the process, locals who are qualified for supervisory positions were pushed aside and replaced by foreign workers. Is there an explanation for this demoralizing disposition by BSI’s top guns? Our rather reticent people attached to BSI have started voicing their sentiments and these expressions, Mr. Brown, didn’t spin out of thin air.

Well, as the single licensee he ought to understand instantly that BSI either makes good on its commitment or lose it all! What’s your view of keeping the local economy homogenous?

BSI paying taxes isn’t at issue as much as whether it is sufficiently taxed, knowing that filthy rich players have come and gone leaving behind millions in losses. Hope the loss isn’t a design to demonstrate that the industry could be a very lucrative venture or that the island is now the center of money laundering.

Fiesta at taxpayers’ expense!

Rafaet and Biktot took the entire Cabinet to Rota last week purportedly for meetings. It was timed with the Fiestan San Isidro for party time. They’ve done it twice already! Is the meeting a state function? Isn’t this a violation of separation of church and state? So taxpayers end up paying over $20,000 for airline tickets for weekend parties? Isn’t the Legislature equally guilty of wasteful spending too in the superficial excuse of participatory democracy?

Why are Rafaet and Biktot splurging on our taxes? Aren’t we suffering heavily in abject poverty because of their lack of leadership? Why the obvious lack of purpose? Why can’t this money be spent on medical referral so it sends critical patients off-island on a timely basis? Why not buy critical hospital supplies so patients could change gowns daily and not suffer healthcare rationing as a result of insufficient funds?

Is this prudent spending per your jungle rules? I ask OPA to probe the abusive expenditure of public funds for quick vacations at taxpayers’ expense!

Labor challenge

The NMI has taken a long snooze after federal takeover of immigration. U.S. immigration policy literally denied it CW workers’ approval of applications via their employers.

The immigration takeover would bring the economic future of the islands to its knees. It is also the case in neighboring Guam to the south. Politicians are busy talking and talking….

The reality is neither jurisdiction could provide the needed warm bodies on major construction projects. I’m afraid that Guam, like the NMI in its lawsuit against the feds in recent years, would be told that control of immigration rests with the federal government, no other.