Reyes: Close Manila office to fund scholarship

Senate Floor Leader Pete Reyes has renewed calls for the closure of the Commonwealth’s Manila Liaison Office to increase government funding on law-mandated scholarships.

The CNMI government stands to save close to $100,000 in rental and personnel wage expenses from the proposed closure of the Manila Liaison Office which, Mr. Reyes said, can be reprogrammed to fund scholarship programs for local college students.

The senator said savings from the closure of the liaison office in the Philippine capital may also be used to finance the operation of the Northern Marianas College’s own Small Business Development Center.

“I’d rather see the taxpayers’ money we spend to continue operating the Manila Liaison Office be diverted to more essential government programs like the scholarship and SBDC,” he said.

Last fiscal year, the government spent $4 million for financial assistance while at least $2.5 million have been appropriated for the same program this year.

The figure represents over one percent of the total government budget and is about 7-8 percent of funding allotted to the Public School System.

“It is imperative that we continue to support the scholarship program so that our children will continue to pursue higher education . . . and hopefully contribute to reducing, if not eliminating, the Commonwealth’s need for guest workers,” Mr. Reyes said.

The number of staff at the Manila Liaison Office is now down to two employees from the previous 11, following the privatization of the government’s medical referral program in the Philippines.

The public health department since 1998 began tapping the services of health maintenance organizations to handle medical referral patients from the Northern Marianas to the Philippines.

The CNMI has been sending medical referral patients to the Makati Medical Center, St. Luke’s Hospital and Cardinal Santos Hospital.

The Commonwealth earlier explored the possibility of shutting down the entire Manila Liaison Office but ended up keeping the employment processing division primarily because the Philippines continues to be the Commonwealth’s main source of skilled and professional workers.

The government is maintaining the operation of its labor office in Manila to continuously identify workers with fraudulent documents from coming in to the CNMI.

The CNMI’s labor office in the Philippines, however, gave up most of the office space it previously occupies. Although it remains in the same location in a suburb city west of Manila, it is now occupying a much smaller and less expensive space.

Rental expenses for the Liaison Office’s previous office cost the CNMI government close to $36,000 every year.

The CNMI government had been shelling out $77,800 every year in total wages of the office’s personnel who have been assisting medical referral patients and reviewing the employment documents of Filipino workers bound for the Northern Marianas.