Business community needs help

At Issue: The business community is the “other” equal partner whom we have estranged, needlessly.

Our View: We need not employ the St. Thomas attitude in order to understand real suffering in this sector.

Businessmen throughout these isles have worked 18-hour days just to make ends meet since the onslaught of the Asian flu some four years ago.

We have seen the closure of more than 2000-plus businesses over the same period. A good portion of them are hanging on thread thin hope that they’d make it through the end of this year.

Since four years ago, businesses (especially tourism related firms) have shut down just as soon as projections tell a grim picture of what lies ahead. This was the first luggage squad that exited the Saipan International Airport returning home with what little is left in their savings.

The cancellation by Pacific Development Inc. (PDI) of its Managaha Transfer Service is another serious indicator of the drop in the volume of business in this sector. The decision is premised on “non-profitability”, therefore, the cancellation. Continental Airlines canceled direct services from Japan as a result of a drop in load factor. All these while we attempt to force political solutions to major economic setbacks.

The onus of providing the avenue to help ourselves can no longer be treated with another convenient scapegoat. It is up to us, now! The Omnibus Economic Reforms Act included long and thoroughly thought-out provisions that would lend to efforts from within to strengthen economic recovery. The House of Representatives has done its share of responsibility. The measure is now in the Senate for the past two months.

The greater issue of substance in this debate for intransigent policymakers in the Senate is jobs creation for the more than 400 students who will be going through their commencement exercises late this month and early June.
Have you in fact prepared the way for the majority of graduating seniors who will be seeking for jobs to pay their tuition this summer and fall semesters? If not, perhaps you have some golfers’ excuse to offer to skirt the issue, again, in grand fashion?

The Senate is known for its agility in railroading legislation without appropriate review. Let’s see what you can offer by way of true and tested leadership. Gamesmanship isn’t the answer either for the multitude who have been job hunting for the last three years now. Need your intransigence force them to endure abject poverty and loss of personal dignity because you’ve failed them with your fiduciary responsibility to bring their livelihood to the level of common decency? Si Yuus Maase`!