Babauta exempts 3 physicians from salary cap

Gov. Juan N. Babauta has exempted three Commonwealth Health Center physicians from the salary cap, allowing them to receive from $93,000 to $156,000 a year.

The Compensation Adjustment Act sets the annual salary limit to $50,000.

In his letters of certification sent to the Legislature, Babauta approved Dr. Christopher Ham (Emergency Medicine) to receive $93,600, Dr. Gregory Kotheimer (Internal/Emergency Medicine), $112,500 and Dr. Ian McLeod (Emergency), $156,000.

Government officials say that the CNMI’s low salary is linked to the shortage of doctors at CHC. Authorities said it is very hard to convince medical practitioners, especially those from the U.S. and Canada, to come to the CNMI due to its “unattractive” compensation package.

In other news, the House of Representatives has rejected the Senate’s amendments to House Bill 14-344, which aims to extend for another 10 years the employment of nonresident workers at the Department of Public Health.

The Senate had only approved two years for DPH and included a provision in the bill to provide a one-year extension for alien workers at the Department of Public Works and Commonwealth Utilities Corp.

Earlier, DPH said that the 2005 sunset provision in hiring foreign workers is “unrealistic” and the one-year restriction on employment contract is “unreasonable.”

In a position paper submitted to the Legislature, DPH Secretary James U. Hofschneider said that despite the CNMI’s best effort to recruit local residents, the department continues to need healthcare professionals from overseas.

He said that the education and development of sufficient local healthcare workers “must be viewed as a long-term program that will not be able to fill the Commonwealth’s increasing needs within the near future, despite the department’s best efforts.”

Further, Hofschneider said that the existing one-year limitation on employment contracts of nonresident workers “has proven to be unreasonable and financially expensive to the department.”

The intent of the law, which is to increase the chances for resident workers to replace nonresidents at contract completion, “has no impact on the DPH positions.”

He said that positions are continuously recruited for local residents but “in most cases there are no local healthcare professionals available.”

As a result of the one-year restriction, he said guest workers often leave after the contract, requiring the government to provide tickets and shipment for the repatriation as well for the new workers coming in.