Thirteen workers from the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. and two staff from the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. may be among those that might not be able to renew their CNMI-only transitional worker status as the cap for fiscal year 2016 was reached earlier this month.<\/p>\n
According to CUC acting executive director Gary Camacho, the 12 workers from the power plant and one from the water and waste water engineering division are up for renewal prior to the next fiscal year which starts on Oct. 1, 2016.<\/p>\n
Of those 13, seven will have their status expire in June, three in July, two in August, and one in September.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, CUC also experienced being caught in CW woes as about 20 of their power plant workers who were up for renewal got delayed because of late submission of documents.<\/p>\n
CUC did not have a human resources manager then, but has hired Andrew Orsini since to address their HR needs particularly the CW petitions. <\/p>\n
Camacho said he is not sure if the papers of the 13 workers were processed or filed already.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in the process of preparing all the documentations,\u201d Camacho said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I know is that we have 13 workers that obviously we have to renew soon,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
The are a total of 32 CW workers in the power plant.<\/p>\n
According to Camacho, not having these workers renewed will have a big impact on the power plant\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese people are highly trained and highly qualified people that we really need,\u201d Camacho said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are power plant personnel with many years of experience,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Camacho said it is \u201cimperative that we do everything we can to keep them in the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to continue them forward as we continue to develop our non-CW worker staff,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Asked how what they are going to do should the workers get caught in the cap, Camacho said, \u201cWe are going to look into ways in ensuring their continued assistance to the corporation and it\u2019s important that we make an effort to make sure that our program continues to function properly.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, there were no clear directions yet on how CUC will pursue this, and when asked if they will be willing to adjust the status of their workers, Camacho said \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no real discussion on what direction we\u2019re going to go but that should all transpire over the next few days,\u201d Camacho said.<\/p>\n
The hospital, on the other hand, has only identified two staff so far that might be affected by the cap breach.<\/p>\n
Hospital staff<\/strong><\/p>\n CHCC chief executive officer Esther Muna told Saipan Tribune that they continue to review and determine the impact of the USCIS announcement.<\/p>\n \u201cCHCC HR is currently reviewing the USCIS cap announcement to determine the impact on its CW workforce and the services CHCC provides to the community,\u201d Muna said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe may have two staff CW applications that may be rejected,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Muna did not specify which department of the hospital the two staff work for, however, earlier interviews with Nursing director Leslie Camacho said that a big batch of nurses would be requiring CW renewals around July of this year.<\/p>\n Though undetermined if those nurses already had their papers processed, Camacho earlier assured that they are working on the renewals \u201ceven earlier than the prescribed 90 days in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n Out of the hospital\u2019s 152 nurses, more than 80 percent, or about 127 are CW workers.<\/p>\n According to Muna, they will have no choice but to comply with the law. <\/p>\n \u201cWe will have to comply but I agree with the other businesses.\u00a0It never gave us a chance to try to avoid this situation,\u201d Muna said. \u201cNow we have to pay overtime to cover for those affected.\u201d<\/p>\n Muna said they will \u201cwork with the leaders\u201d in addressing the CW issue. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thirteen workers from the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. and two staff from the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[666,49,118,50],"class_list":["post-228634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-chcc","tag-cuc","tag-cw","tag-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228634","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\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}