CNMI govt to avail of CUC’s pre-pay program

The CNMI government will be availing of the Web-Based Electric Prepay Program that the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. launched last Thursday, as a means of eliminating outstanding balances and to stay current with government accounts.

CUC’s pre-pay program allows a customer, through a special meter, to go online and buy or pay for energy before they use it.

Finance Secretary Larissa Larson, who graced the launch of the pre-pay program, said: “It’s going to be a great way to work on efficiency throughout the government in the usage of power, living within their budgets, and just being more responsible managers as far as operations of their government offices.”

The pre-pay program is currently available to residential and government customers, but not commercial.

“We are very excited about the opportunity. It will reduce receivables,” said Larson.

She believes that getting the government into the pre-pay program will eliminate billing disputes between the government and CUC.

Right now, according to Larson, there is a $3-million dispute between CUC and the government and both parties have been working on this by going through each and every account of the government and reconciling them.

“We’ve been working closely with CUC to resolve a lot of the outstanding bills. The overall goal is to reach a point where we are current in our balances. We have accounts with CUC that are in dispute. So what we are doing is we are going one by one through the disputed accounts. As we clear, we make payments. When they clear, that gets taken off our record,” she said.

“We have resolved a lot of the outstanding balance that we’ve had over the years and now it’s just a matter of going one by one. We support this and look forward to expanding this and eventually getting everyone…stay current,” Larson added.

According to CUC executive director Gary Camacho, over 400 special meters have been installed in government accounts.

“Over the course of October, we will be testing some of these accounts to make sure it’s on an effective and efficient implementation. We plan to get all the government accounts on board by beginning of November,” he said.

Larson said they are going to use the month of October to test the pre-pay system.

“In November, we hope to have as many agencies come online as possible and just go full force. It’s really all about accountancy and efficiency. The usage of the power is in the hands of each of the agencies so that they will be able to monitor their power usage. They will be able to budget and live within their budget,” she said.

“We’ve always had issues where it’s difficult to predict the utilities budget for the government, but with the pre-pay program, we are able to live within a budget and be better stewards of money entrusted to us,” she said.