Focus on Education: CNMI’s People–Asset or Liability? By: Anthony Pellegrino

Several years ago the library set up a reading improvement program for employees in various companies. About eight private sector companies agreed to hold tutorial reading sessions for their most illiterate employees twice a week. After training the tutors from the various companies, the program started. However after a few sessions the program was stopped.

In checking why, the answers were quite revealing. Some of the employees felt embarrassed being singled out as needing remedial reading. But in most cases the company managers stopped the program because they didn’t want their employees to be better readers than they were!

If the CNMI is to ever gain economic security, the government must seriously sponsor programs encouraging its employees to want to improve themselves. Only after successfully completing these self-improvement programs should the employees be rewarded with pay increases or promotions.

As the status is now, every employee receives a yearly automatic pay increase for simply being on the job. Regardless of his ability or improvement in work, the automatic pay increase is his. After twenty years he is still performing on the same level as his first year. But now he can receive a high retirement pay for simply showing up at his work place for twenty years. This statement of fact will not offend the sincere hard working minority who apply and improve themselves daily. The ones who have been sliding through will take offense. Good! Get angry, but prove you are improving yourself.

I am reminded of a former employee who claimed to have had twenty-five years of restaurant experience. After a few months on the job I fired him. It was true he had twenty-five years of experience, but he had repeated the first one year–twenty five times over with no improvement! So it is with many employees.

The government must insist that any employee eligible for a pay increase must show an improvement in his work performance and attendance. The government must bring in trainers and tutors to educate its work force. Then it must set up monitoring systems to make sure that the learning is being applied.

The Governor and the Legislature must insist that any appointee to any cabinet or directorship of any agency show a strong literacy record. Until leaders become strong thinkers, readers, writers, and speakers, they will not be able to motivate their employees to perform well. Stop appointing friends and political payoffs. They are a liability to the CNMI.

We have an ample source of potential leaders who are able to invigorate and motivate others around them. Seek them out and appoint them. Just because the candidate doesn’t belong to the party is no reason to reject him. If we are sincere about our love and desire to make the CNMI a better place, there is no room for biased choices.

For me to illustrate the lack of literacy and creative thinking with examples from the current government labor force would fill a volume, therefore you fill in your own examples. Many of you personally know and experience daily what I am writing about.

Because of brevity of space, I cannot enumerate the ways that the government can improve the educational level of its employees. We have many intelligent people employed in the government, but they need encouragement and promises of a better future if they are to improve themselves and benefit the CNMI.

It is not lack of economic opportunities, nor lack of resources that is currently hurting the CNMI. Frankly speaking, it is a paucity of inspired leaders to motivate employees. Until we take action to improve thinking and skill level of all employees, we are simply giving lip-service to improving the debility that the CNMI is in.