Gov. Ralph DLG Torres assured that he and other community members are working on a long-term fix to the labor crisis besetting the CNMI.<\/p>\n
Torres said yesterday that his administration and other stakeholders are working on a CW-1 bill to propose to Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP).<\/p>\n
\u201cFor several months now, we have been working on a CW bill for the long run, including an extension, and the number of CW-1 slots we are requesting,\u201d said the governor. <\/p>\n
Torres is working with members of the private sector through the Strategic Economic Develop Council and the Northern Marianas Business Alliance Corp.<\/p>\n
Torres, however, has yet to meet with Sablan regarding the CW-1 package. <\/p>\n
He said he appreciates the 350 slots added to the CNMI\u2019s CW-1 quota for the fiscal year, thanks to Sablan\u2019s H.R. 339, which U.S. President Donald J. Trump enacted last week.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026 Ultimately, lives are going to be saved [with] nurses and engineers and so forth. \u2026 Our goal is to increase [the CW-1 slots] to 18,000 and then extend it for another 10 years,\u201d said Torres on the goals of the CW package.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is our job to make sure that Congress understands our situation and to advocate our situations here,\u201d said the governor, adding that what he wishes from Congress is not a bailout but to \u201cnot restrict hiring our labor because without our workforce we won\u2019t be able to develop our infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torres wishes that the local government is more involved in discussions as well to \u201cdictate what our goals are here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout the government\u2019s involvement, it is very difficult to project what kind of workforce is being applied,\u201d said Torres, without mentioning a specific timeline for the package as well as a timeline for when he is meeting with Sablan.<\/p>\n
In previous interviews with Sablan, he reiterated multiple times that H.R. 339 is meant to be a short-term fix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres assured that he and other community members are working on a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[26,118,133],"class_list":["post-259046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cnmi","tag-cw","tag-run"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259046","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\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}