Inos renews state of emergency for CUC

Gov. Eloy S. Inos has renewed the state of significant emergency for the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. to allow CUC to, among other things, renew the contracts and hire foreign expert workers to sustain the integrity of CUC’s systems.

“This declaration is necessary to protect the health and safety of our children, our senior citizens, businesses, and all other CNMI residents and visitors,” Inos said in the declaration that will take effect for 30 days.

The governor issued the declaration despite his April directive that restored the full power of the CUC board of directors. For nine years now, starting with Inos’ predecessors, the governor has assumed “all powers and duties of the board of directors of CUC.”

Inos suspended Section 4531 of Title 3 of the Commonwealth Code to allow CUC have the full power and authority to retain staff, which may include employees other than U.S. citizens and permanent U.S. residents.

CUC has not enough U.S. citizens or U.S. resident technical specialists to perform generation work, particularly specialists with experience in the type of engines that the utilities agency uses.

CUC believes that the vast majority of skill sets, considering its cash restrictions, must come from non-U.S. personnel. It has tried to hire diesel mechanics in the CNMI, but has been unsuccessful in finding enough qualified candidates.

In citing the substantial impact of an inadequate workforce, Inos said there would be a direct deterioration of service to existing customers and that there would be brownouts or area blackouts with the loss of service.

Inos said the power plants would again degrade, producing more of these outages.

Finally, the governor said, if CUC fails to meet federal court deadlines for the stipulated orders, the court could appoint a federal receiver and its consulting team, with all expenses charged to CUC customers.

Thus, Inos said, continued relief from the legislative prohibition on hiring foreign national workers is necessary to ensure the delivery of uninterrupted power services.

He urged the Legislature to address this matter by way of amending a local law to allow CUC to continue employing the services of foreign workers for technical positions that are difficult to fill and to provide for a reasonable transition period.

With respect to CUC’s financial crisis, Inos noted that the utilities agency is owed approximately $20 million by the Public School System and the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. and is owed millions more by residential customers.

Although the Commonwealth economy has recently improved, Inos said it’s only marginal and the economy and the government’s finances are still fragile.

The governor said CUC often only has days’ worth of purchased diesel fuel to power its system because it lacks the funds to buy oil from its sole, cash-only supplier.

CUC has no credit or other means to buy fuel than the revenue it collects from its customers.