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Road repairs suspended
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Posted on Dec 03 2004
Essential public services on Saipan that require trucks and other heavy equipment have been temporarily suspended as there is no money to pay for equipment rentals, according to Mayor Juan B. Tudela yesterday.
He asked for the “patience and understanding” of the community while the CNMI government tries to find the $200,000 needed to fund a local appropriation that became law six weeks ago.
Gov. Juan N. Babauta signed into law Saipan Local Law No. 14-10 on Oct. 15. The new measure provides over $5.1 million for eight local projects, including $200,000 for the long-overdue heavy equipment rentals for the Saipan Mayor’s Office.
Tudela said, however, that no funds are available for the projects, which also include money going to the water task force, emergency road paving, municipal scholarships and others.
He said that in addition to the $200,000 rental debt, an additional $250,000 has been credited to local equipment vendors for more rentals due to recent heavy rains. However, when vendors learned that no payment was forthcoming, all rentals to the mayor’s office were cut.
“This means,” he said, “that requests from the general public for road repairs, coral deliveries, clearing, grading and so on must be suspended until such time as local vendors have been paid.”
Meanwhile, he said the backlog of job requests from the public for assistance continues to grow daily.
According to Tudela, all the heavy equipment owned by the municipality were purchased at least a decade ago and are today inoperative, extremely undependable and subject to very frequent breakdowns. He said the municipality needs new dump trucks, front-end loaders and other essential heavy equipment just to “normalize” the daily operations and maintain the island’s more than 40 miles of unpaved roads.
“I appeal to the general public to be more patient because we are doing all we can within our limited resources,” said Tudela. “We ask for their patience and understanding.”
