Sablan: Vital our utilities are prioritized

With employees being laid off and retirees not receiving their full pension, their ability to pay for electricity and water are compromised. For this reason, the Senate wants the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. to assure that there will be no interruption to its services.

Sen. Vinnie Sablan (Ind-Saipan), at the Senate session last Tuesday, called for the provision of utilities to be prioritized, especially as the community faces the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our people are being laid off. How will they then be able to pay their utility bill, and how will that affect the ability of CUC to provide services for our community?” the senator asked.

“It is vital that our utilities are prioritized. If there’s any last ounce of sanity for our people as they endure quarantine and all the orders that are coming their way, and if there’s one thing that is providing comfort for them, it’s power, water, and wastewater services,” he added.

The legislator also spoke with Sen. Teresita Santos (Ind-Rota), chairperson of the Senate Standing Committee on Public Utilities, Transportation & Communications, to address the concern.

Sablan noted that it would be good to get information from CUC to learn the corporation’s current state of providing and sustaining utilities to the local community, both on the residential and the commercial side.

“The absence of utility services will be detrimental. People will face an even more challenging time. It will be rather hard to keep our residents’ home as they struggle to find what it is that they need to provide for their families.”

Further, Sablan said that utility services are crucial because it is the “one thing that we all need, the one thing that keeps us comforted as we go through this pandemic, as we go through this quarantine.”

Without an end of this pandemic in sight, the senator said that it is important to find out where CUC’s resources are and how long they can sustain the community. “We need to find out whether they [CUC] have the ability with the anticipation of nobody paying their utility bills. How long can we keep power and water on in our homes and in our communities?”

The senator, during the session, also expressed appreciation to the staff and leadership of CUC in continuing to provide services to residents and businesses, and lobbied that they be given all the resources necessary.