House, CUC mull re-hiring guest workers

House Vice Speaker Joseph Deleon Guerrero has been talking with Commonwealth Utilities Corp.’s executive director Antonio Muña on the need for CUC to rehire guest workers due to severe manpower shortage and engine problems occurring almost daily at the Power Plant 1 in Lower Base.

Deleon Guerrero said the law that caused CUC not renew the contracts of long-time nonresident workers had reduced the number of mechanics, assistants, and technicians at Power Plant 1 alone from 42 down to 24 or 26.

He noted that the Power Plant situation worsened as the manpower shortage was compounded by power engine problems.

“Their current staff [at Power Plant 1] are basically getting burned out,” Deleon Guerrero told Saipan Tribune. “When you lack manpower, you make people go on overtime and that’s a cost itself.”

The vice speaker has been discussing the manpower issue with Muña to see if CUC could justify to the Legislature how to accommodate the manpower shortfall.

“They still have people, but do they have enough people, especially now when almost everyday there is an engine going down?” he asked.

Because of a sunset provision in the law, the contracts of CUC’s nonresident employees were not renewed and some of them, like engineers, have contracts that will be expiring in September this year.

Deleon Guerrero said there is a need to revisit the law—at least in the interim until power engines at Power Plant 1 are rehabilitated and power producer Aggreko International comes in.

“We’re looking at possibly allowing CUC to hire [guest workers] again if it can demonstrate that they have tried to hire from the resident workforce. But if there is not enough qualified people, then I guess they can justify that,” he said.

Deleon Guerrero said he has asked Muña to justify the number of guest workers needed—at least to be able to man the engines at Power Plant 1.

In the case of non-engineers such as technicians, they could be trained but it would take two to three years to get them certified.

“At least for the meantime, in the next year or two, we need to revisit the issue and extend the sunset provision,” Deleon Guerrero said.

In September 2007, more than 20 nonresident workers plus six engineers stopped working at CUC after the sunset provision came into effect. Since that time, no law has been passed allowing CUC to keep employing alien workers.

Then CUC spokesperson Pamela Mathis told Saipan Tribune that they have been asking the Legislature to extend the legal deadline.

The Northern Marianas College does not have an engineering program nor a diesel engine maintenance program.

“With those limitations in the CNMI, plus the expectations for reliable power, it put us in a really tough position,” Mathis had said.

In 2005, then governor Juan N. Babauta signed bills into law extending the employment of over a hundred nonresident workers in some government offices, including at CUC, for one to five years. That measure allowed CUC to keep its nonresident engineers and power plant mechanics until Sept. 30, 2007.