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CPA gets $250K to resolve long lines
The lengthy immigration lines at the Francisco C. Ada-Saipan International Airport was again the focus of talks during the Marianas Visitors Authority’s regular meeting yesterday.
According to MVA managing director Chris Concepcion, the MVA China ad hoc committee voted among themselves to give the entirety of their budget, $250,000, to the Commonwealth Ports Authority.
The money, according to Concepcion and CPA executive director Chris Tenorio, would be used to buy Automated Passport Control machines, or APCs, that will hopefully speed up the process of going through immigration.
Since the MVA board has already allocated the $250,000 to the committee, the board need not vote anymore on a decision.
“I [believe] this is more of a discussion and something the management supports,” Concepcion told MVA board members. “It’s going to help somewhat with the [long immigration] lines.”
Once the price quotations for the APC machines are received, about three machines would be purchased for the Saipan airport, Tenorio said.
Tenorio said that CPA would be responsible for procuring the APC machines.
Tenorio told Saipan Tribune that CPA is still trying to find an APC vendor and the agency has been communicating with the Guam airport about this matter.
“Guam has told us [of] companies that sell APC machines, so we are going to be communicating with the companies to see how much it would cost and if they could deliver it as soon as possible,” said Tenorio.
Tenorio thinks that although the long immigration lines won’t disappear, “[the APC machines] will help.”
“Right now we are trying to accommodate all the people that are arriving in the best that we can,” he added.
Tourists who want to enter the CNMI all go through Customs and Border Protection, officers.
CPA is also looking to address flight schedules to give CBP more time to process immigration papers. Tenorio said that CPA is looking to spread out flight schedules.
“Once everything is all worked out, we are going to meet with the airlines one by one and start scheduling them. The scheduling is so that we could have in-between flights to give CBP time to process what they need to process before the next flight comes in,” he said.
