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Job audit nearing end
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Posted on Nov 11 2006
About 500 to 1,000 positions in the private sector that can be occupied by local residents are now being looked at by the Saipan Chamber of Commerce.
Chamber vice president Alex Sablan said the job audit, which was requested by the Fitial administration, is expected to be completed by next month.
“The basic question is: Are there 500 [to 1,000] jobs that can be held by locals and U.S. citizens in the Commonwealth that are currently held by the nonresident workers? That’s our task—to find those categories in the job market that we believe could be held by locals. We have done some preliminary work. Our deadline is December,” said Sablan.
He said the Chamber is working with the Office of the Public Auditor on the private sector-wide jobs audit.
He said there are two working groups—the enforcement group and classification group—that are handling the audit.
“We are getting our statistical information, data, resources from the Department of Commerce. We have eight weeks to work on it [audit] and we are on the third week this week,” said Sablan on Wednesday.
Earlier, Chamber president Charles V. Cepeda said the audit would not only determine what type of jobs are available but also show which line of work has an abundance of employed personnel.
“Looking at the Labor statistics would not tell you the actual number of people occupying positions. The audit would show you how many residents and nonresident workers are in a certain types of profession,” Cepeda had said.
The Governor’s Office recently wrote Public Auditor Michael Sablan to conduct a study of employment in the private sector to identify jobs being held by nonresident workers that could be filled by qualified resident workers.
Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Villagomez said he feels that a good number of jobs for which work permits are being issued could be filled by local workers.
There are some 30,000 nonresident worker permits issued each year.
The government employs over 5,000 personnel, which costs about $6 million every two weeks in payroll. This government has already implemented drastic cost-cutting measures, including a 10-percent wage cut and layoff of personnel, to bring this overhead cost down.
