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‘CUC ended up paying more at La Fiesta’
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Posted on Apr 12 2006
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp.’s intention to save money by transferring its offices to the La Fiesta Mall in San Roque under the previous administration failed to materialize. Instead, CUC ended up paying more.
Anthony C. Guerrero, acting CUC executive director, in an interview with the Saipan Tribune, disclosed that, as a result of relocating their offices to La Fiesta, their fleet fuel expenses increased by 20 percent.
CUC reportedly incurred $480,000—or $60,000 per month—in cost during its eight-month operation of the power plant at La Fiesta.
“La Fiesta was practically built to be self-sufficient in terms of water, power. It was never connected to the CUC system,” Guerrero said.
“It cost us more to go back and forth from our jobsites and all of that. Communication was very bad over there,” he added.
Now that their offices at La Fiesta have been relocated back to the Joeten Dandan building, Guerrero said this would allow CUC’s operations to be more efficient.
Guerrero pointed out that when CUC was at La Fiesta, customers had to go to the Dandan office to apply for power, then go up to Capitol Hill to apply for water and sewer, which was a very inconvenient setup.
“Now we’re back here [Dandan]. We have a one-stop center down here in the customers service area,” he said.
The executive director said that, as soon as they get everything in order at the customer service section, there would be representatives assigned from each division to entertain customers applying for power, water, or sewer.
Partrick Leon Guerrero, CUC acting deputy of operations, said the transfer of the offices back to Dandan has a big impact on the employees’ morale.
“Everybody used to be under one roof before. When we moved to La Fiesta, we had different divisions moved to different areas. So we lost personal contact with one another,” Leon Guerrero said.
He added that since everybody is back, the employees are all excited to be “together again as one unit.”
