Sen. Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota) is back in the Senate.<\/p>\n
Manglona, a longtime senator and former Senate president, was sworn in during a Senate session yesterday to officially take the vacated seat of former Senate president Victor B. Hocog, after the latter ascended to the post of lieutenant governor following the passing of the late governor Eloy S. Inos last December. Manglona finished third in the last Rota Senate election.<\/p>\n
When pressed for issues he\u2019d like to work on, Manglona said he did not have any particular legislation but noted discussions he laid out with many people \u201csince retiring a year ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stressed a need to work on \u201ceconomic challenges\u201d and pledged to work with the members of the Senate to address these.<\/p>\n
Manglona wants legislation that will go a long way to address hardships faced especially by the people of Rota.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver here [Saipan] people are really suffering but the suffering down on Rota is 10 times more. We have concerns with Medicaid issues on Rota because our facilities are not Medicaid approved. Our people have to fly here, pay $200, just to get medical attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe no longer put people [in-patients] in the hospital. We have to send them here,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Manglona lamented the cost of shipping between islands.<\/p>\n
\u201cA young couple trying to build a house on Rota. They order materials, put them in a container\u2014$3,000 to Guam or Saipan, when it gets to Saipan, pay another $4,000 just to get to Rota\u2014so it\u2019s a very tough. <\/p>\n
Manglona said he is not the first one to speak about these issues. \u201cA lot of people have moved to Saipan, Guam, and the U.S. for greener pastures. So how do we bring our people back? Give them hope, give them opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manglona said \u201cit\u2019s a payday to payday\u201d life on Rota, where he claimed people have been selling their land cheap just to send their kids to college or provide family with healthcare.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not trying to belittle the sacrifices or hardships here on Saipan,\u201d he said, saying these issues must be addressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sen. Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota) is back in the Senate. Manglona, a longtime senator and former…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[51,163,67,9657],"class_list":["post-220648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-guam","tag-kids","tag-people","tag-rota-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220648","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}