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CDA turns over $1.7M to Finance for CHC
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Posted on Jul 28 2011
The Commonwealth Development Authority transferred Wednesday noon $1.7 million to the Finance Department that will be used to pay for the debts the hospital owes its vendors, according to CDA executive director Manuel Sablan yesterday.
The amount, Sablan said, was the interest income generated by the agency from the $140 million bond that was floated by the CNMI government in the 1990s.
Because of the emergency declaration issued by acting governor Eloy Inos, the transfer did not require board approval and any other requirements besides a certification justifying the emergency declaration from the Executive Branch, he added.
Sablan explained that the $1.7 million has been sitting in the CDA account and represents interest gained for many years. With the money’s transfer to a government account, CDA loses its jurisdiction over the money, Sablan said.
By statute, any interest income from the bond requires legislative appropriation and must specifically be used for capital improvement projects.
Inos reprogrammed the $1.7 million to help address the state of emergency at the Commonwealth Health Center. He said the amount will prevent the hospital from shutting its doors to patients.
The emergency declaration allows Inos to suspend all statutory or regulatory provisions and provides him the ability to reprogram available and authorized resources to address the emergency.
The Legislature earlier alerted Inos to the serious condition at the hospital, which lacks medical supplies and 21 different kinds of reagents necessary for tests such as etoh, carbamazapine, cultures (except blood), and creatinine.
CHC’s emergency room also lacks physicians necessary to treat patients and those who are available are hampered by the lack of diagnostic tests such as CBC, cultures, lytes, kidney tests, and heart attack tests.
The state of emergency declaration at CHC, which also covers the Tinian and Rota health centers, was made because of the “imminent threat of disruption in the delivery of critical healthcare services and its ability to keep the doors open to ‘healthcare facilities’ due to a severe cash shortage.”
