The promise of education hasn’t been delivered

The promise of education for our people hasn’t been delivered yet by our leaders. We need to start shaping up our scholarship system to educate our children to work for our community—not invest our money for them to work somewhere else. We need to guarantee our investors that our college will provide training and education for their workforce needs and seek their financial assistance to pay for college. Our leaders haven’t done that yet.

Why is the Northern Marianas College closed on Tinian? Why are we paying the Tinian gaming commissioners $80,000 each yet until now they don’t have a program to help us get a decent job training program so our people can work for Dynasty and earn a decent salary for their needs? Plus, what are they doing that the casino now is in jeopardy of losing investor support and their employees?

This is a threat to our economy and the trust of our investors. Mayors should have invested in providing education to those commissioners that they planned to appoint. It is sad that they closed our college; it could have been a useful tool to educate our commissioners in gaining the trust of our investors.

Why are many government employees sitting down doing nothing but gossiping and judging others? You might say it is their parents’ fault. Well, while I was unemployed I studied their behavior and the reason behind it all. And I noticed that whoever is responsible for their position isn’t doing what is required to deliver the promise of education. Supporting education is not only giving the school budget. Supporting education is also providing assistance in guiding government employee with the career they are working for. For example, if they are a public relations officer, the personnel office should be evaluating that individual’s annual or quarterly performance and providing feedback on what part of his/her duties he/she needs to improve on and how. Such as what classes or trainings he needs to take to improve and share this needs with our community college. Do you understand what I mean? Has this been done? Again this is a loss of investment for our college and the government giving them so much money for salary, which end up being used for drugs, gambling, and other things that can be harmful to their wellbeing.

If I’m in that position, I would make a payroll deduction for their training needs and improve their skills, so that they can provide better services. In this way their attendance for training can be monitored and evaluated by the college. With this kind of program, all three—the government, the college and the employee—benefit from it. Our tax dollars is invested wisely.

They say the local people are lazy and don’t like to work. Well, I don’t blame them. Our government system is responsible for them being like that. It pays them a lot for sitting down and doing whatever they want to do, instead of using that salary to educate them to improve their skills to develop an effective government system that will help improve our economy instead of destroying it.

Many unemployed individuals are suffering due to the need for education and training in order to make a living. All they know is farming, cleaning, being a waiter, and all low-salaried labor. Why? Because that is the only training and education they have. Not helping them improve with an effective system will only leads to stress, desperation, and destruction.

We are in jeopardy of both losing our government and our culture. If we don’t end this game now, guess who is going to take over. U.S. Immigration is granting citizenship to many of these educated CWs who have children born and raised in the CNMI. Guess who will take over if we don’t shape up and take care of each other?

End this political game and start protecting your people by providing them with all their educational needs. Because if you don’t, come that time, you’re the one who is going to suffer more, because our children are going to support them too, because you are neglecting them.

My brother who is a licensed electrical engineer came back several years ago and offered to work here on Tinian. Guess what our mayor and governor said? This so sad, our CUC issue could have been fixed but greedy politicians with conflict of interest turned him down. Now my brother is working in the mainland and has his own business for electrical services. They are been contracted by several cities and companies for electrical services.  My brother has the skills to create programs, design parts, train employees, manage our CUC and address all issues that we are facing today. He has the capacity to address Congress with the many issues that we are facing today with our workforce issues.  Although the municipality did not fund most of his education, he was willing to work for our government for a smaller salary than what he was earning, for he loves our island and wishes to come home. Too bad we lost him already.

My brother was not the only one treated that way by our government. There are many who graduated and left because the promise to support education is just to win the people’s vote of confidence. Yes, they give the college money, but what did the board and management do with it? That I don’t see. The curriculum they are using is the basic requirements to comply with the accreditation team. This is okay, but not so okay when our cultural value is being diminished little by little. It won’t be long before we all pay the price for our leaders’ desperation and choices they make.

If you agree with me, then help me and address your concerns to our leaders. It is time to demand their attentions to our needs for skills trainings. Stop sitting down and judging others’ performance, but instead look for ways to improve your skills so that in the future you can benefit from it. Stop wasting your time on others’ performances or business. Concentrate on learning skills to improve your credentials. Go to work everyday looking for skills to learn so that you can improve yourself.

Winnie Atalig
San Jose, Tinian