Hey! Another thing to fix in the CNMI

In Friday’s Saipan Tribune, the CUC executive director states that “CUC has 120 water wells, many of which do not have standby generators.” So far so good. Then he couldn’t say how many were without generators. It is a very common accounting practice to keep a list of all equipment, acquisition date and cost, their use and location. If he had his tablet with him he could have just touched the screen and retrieved the information, or maybe not, because that kind of information might not exist in offices in the CNMI.

Executive directors from almost every department seem to have the same problem when attending meetings or talking to the press so they are either incompetent or their staff is incompetent, but it’s a fact, some warm body in that department is incompetent. Maybe we need to audit the organizational skills of department heads as well as their funds.

I was at Smiling Cove awhile back and needed the restroom. It was locked so I went inside the back door to the office and found the manager, with his feet on his desk smoking. I told him I think there is a no smoking policy in all government offices; I’d be dead if looks could kill. The only bathroom at Smiling Cove has apparently never been opened because CUC has never hooked up the water to the bathrooms, police rescue area, all those piers and docks where the CNMI earns probably 20 percent of all their tourist tax dollars. Blame has to be shared here, the Smiling Cove manager needs to manage and CUC needs to act.

The CNMI government is like a giant machine with lots of moving parts; some old timers might remember the sugarcane factory machines. If you removed even one part, the whole machine stopped working properly. That’s what’s happening here in the CNMI. CUC doesn’t hook up Smiling Cove’s water, tourists tell their friends, can’t pee, no water, Tax and Revenue doesn’t get the expected revenue, Parks and Recreation has to cut back on grass cutting, tourists tell friends, governor cuts MVA budget, fewer tourists, less revenue, Legislature calls special meeting, only solution is to go to Macao and study the problem (the meeting could be held on Google+ for free of course but six guys will spend your money to go anyway).

Our education system doesn’t even have a class on “why the CNMI government is in the state it is in” so how do you voters of Saipan expect change when you do the same thing, vote for the same incompetent people over and over and expect a different outcome? Only two words can define this, you’re insane. Actually I borrowed that from Albert Einstein, but if the shoe fits, wear it.

Gary DuBrall
Chalan Piao, Saipan