House Speaker Joseph Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) is throwing his support behind a labor task force that the government has created to tackle a looming manpower shortage in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
The lawmaker brought up the labor issue during the Legislature\u2019s \u201cleadership meeting\u201d with Gov. Eloy S. Inos last week.<\/p>\n
He said the talks focused on the closure of the CW program in 2019, which is \u201csomething to put on the table\u201d for lawmakers to look into.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot change our immigration law, it is a federal law. Our concerns need to be brought to the feds and also to Congress,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cHopefully, Congress sees this and amends the law.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the government\u2019s task force on manpower will be headed by the CNMI Department of Labor as well as other agencies.<\/p>\n
The task force will be training resident workers to fill in an anticipated shortage once the CW program is over.<\/p>\n
However, even if all resident workers do take on the available jobs, the CNMI will still have a shortage of about 11,000 workers, Guerrero said.<\/p>\n
He said recent talks with members of the Hotel Association of the Northern Marian Islands focused on the labor shortage, particularly jobs in the hospitality industry.<\/p>\n
The Saipan Chamber of Commerce earlier voiced the same concern regarding a labor shortage.<\/p>\n
Chamber president Alex Sablan earlier said there are approximately 11,400 foreign workers now in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
\u201cApproximately 11,400 foreign workers is what we have today in the CNMI but if all developers are successful in constructing their rooms, we will need 17,000 foreign workers,\u201d Sablan said.<\/p>\n
According to Sablan, based on recent numbers declared by developers that are actively seeking hotel constructions, the number of hotel rooms could swell to 10,000.<\/p>\n
Best Sunshine International, Ltd. alone is projecting some 4,000 rooms.<\/p>\n
The problem becomes apparent, as manpower needed for these hotel developments far exceeds 11,000. \u201cAnd these developments [10,000 rooms] are on Saipan only,\u201d Sablan said.<\/p>\n
There are also developments ongoing on nearby Tinian and Rota.<\/p>\n
Sablan further said the CNMI currently has a 13,399 quota for the CW1 visa. The number will not increase, but will eventually reach zero, he said, adding that the local population cannot sustain the looming deficit.<\/p>\n
Sablan said the math \u201cdoes not add up\u201d anymore, as there are only a few thousand CW1 visas available, compared to the projected need of 17,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
House Speaker Joseph Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) is throwing his support behind a labor task force…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2377,1707,26,118],"class_list":["post-194029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-alex-sablan","tag-best-sunshine-international","tag-cnmi","tag-cw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194029","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\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}