DPW may lose five alien workers

The Department of Public Works may be forced to let go the five foreign workers in its staff, as the Senate is inclined not to approved the department’s request for permission to keep the nonresidents.

Senate President Joseph M. Mendiola said yesterday that the Upper House had no plans to approve House Bill 15-182, which would allow DPW to employ foreign professionals until Sept. 30, 2007.

If enacted, H.B. 15-182 would apply to one architect, one structural engineer, one electrical engineer, and two civil/highways engineers. These employees augment the department’s resident professional staff, which includes one architect, three civil/highways engineer, and one mechanical engineer.

The Nonresident Workers Act originally gave DPW until Sept. 30, 2002 to terminate alien professional workers. But the sunset provision has been extended twice—first, to the end of fiscal year 2005 and then to the end of this fiscal year.

The latest extension proposal, authored by House Vice Speaker Justo S. Quitugua, passed the House by unanimous vote last month.

“We have not entertained that bill, and we don’t have any plan to entertain it,” Mendiola said of the bill.

“DPW has been coming back to the Legislature almost every year, asking an extension and promising to replace their foreign workers with U.S. citizens. But they never made good on their promise. This has to stop. We cannot continue accommodating agencies that never comply with the law,” he added.

Mendiola also described as “a lame excuse” DPW’s statement that infrastructure projects would suffer if the engineers were terminated.

“I don’t accept that. It’s like saying that there are only these engineers in the entire CNMI. DPW can hire private engineers, even temporarily, while they are trying to find permanent replacements. They should address the problem, rather than issuing threats that projects will be on a standstill if they don’t get what they want,” the Senate president said.

He added that all agencies covered by the Nonresident Workers Act should follow the example of the Office of Public Auditor, which has replaced all but one foreign workers with U.S. citizens.

“OPA did a brilliant job at hiring locals. If they can do it, other agencies can do it too,” he said.