The Northern Marianas Technical Institute has yet to obtain any assistance to restore its damaged facilities more than two months after Typhoon Soudelor ravaged Saipan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is that we are a non-profit organization so we are not eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance and since we are not making enough money, we are not eligible for [a] U.S. Small Business Administration [loan],\u201d NMTI chief executive officer Agnes McPhetres said.<\/p>\n
NMTI twice tried to obtain assistance from the two agencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not eligible for the two. As for what will happen next, I am not sure yet because we are trying to meet with the governor but it is kind of difficult to get an appointment [him],\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
McPhetres said the damage incurred by the school has not been calculated yet but her estimate is that it will total more than $1 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest damage is that we lost one of the buildings. There are two buildings that are together at NMTI. One of them is down and that contains the auto mechanics classrooms, offices, and the workshop for the construction trade,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying to make it as affordable as possible by using our students in the construction trades to practice what they learn so that we can rebuild more affordably,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
With the construction workshop down, McPhetres said it hinders the new course that NMTI introduced in June this year. The new course will provide the skills necessary for a graduate to be a maintenance person or a handyman.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying get help from the governor to try and help us to see what he can do as a type of assistance and maybe he has a way of getting assistance. As for SBA, we don\u2019t have enough money to pay back [the loan] because the damage is a lot,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Northern Marianas Technical Institute has yet to obtain any assistance to restore its damaged…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[479,1204,6333],"class_list":["post-211768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-nmti","tag-sba","tag-typhoon-soudelor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211768","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\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}