Saipan Chamber of Commerce president Douglas Brennan is seeking a meeting with Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and the directors of Customs and Quarantine divisions over the negative impact of having inadequate number of customs and quarantine inspectors at the ports because of the government\u2019s austerity measures. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe austerity measures are adversely affecting commerce for our businesses, as well as the consumers that purchase our products that can now wait in containers at the seaport for additional days as a result of those austerity measures,\u201d Brennan said in a Dec. 9 letter to the governor. <\/p>\n
Customs and quarantine officers are not exempt from the 16-hour work cut biweekly. <\/p>\n
Brennan cited as perfect example the events on Friday wherein there was only one quarantine officer available to man all ports where cargo needing inspection entered the CNMI.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat officer was at the Saipan International Airport, leaving the seaport unattended. There were cargo delivery delays, which in turn lead to lost revenue for both businesses and the CNMI government,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In his requested meeting, Brennan said he would also like to address customs and quarantine officers\u2019 pays. He said officers scheduled for additional duty on austerity days, as well as weekends, are only receiving base rate pay, not overtime, as a result of austerity measures.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has created an atmosphere of unwillingness on the part of inspection officers that must come to work on days other than regular service for Customs and Quarantine,\u201d Brennan said.<\/p>\n
He said exacerbating this is that overtime rates are based on presented bill of ladings versus actual hours where CNMI personnel are present. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe sum total of consignees sometimes pays $2,000 to $4,000 per day clearing cargo,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
As of yesterday, there is no scheduled meeting yet between the Chamber, the governor, Customs director Jesus Muna, and Quarantine director Tom Castro.<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s Oct. 13 memo expanded the austerity measures to include federal funded agencies and other previously exempt agencies such as Customs and Quarantine.<\/p>\n
Fitial is only allowing certain personnel from three government agencies to be exempt: the departments of Public Safety and Corrections and the Emergency Management Office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saipan Chamber of Commerce president Douglas Brennan is seeking a meeting with Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and the directors of Customs and Quarantine divisions over the negative impact of having inadequate number of customs and quarantine inspectors at the ports because of the government\u2019s austerity measures. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}