The CNMI has created the elite versus non-elite class in wages and salaries. We now have the 25 percent highest paid employees versus the majority hauling home poverty income biweekly.\u00ab<\/p>\n
The elite group has more money than those who trail behind in poverty income land the latter picking bread crumbs off the floor.<\/p>\n
Why would we want a class of \u201chaves\u201d and \u201chave-nots?\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearly 15,000 are in the poverty income group. What\u2019s the cause of this many people stuck at this level? Is the hold back funding\u2014single or combined resources\u2014to which there may be issues with shared cost? Is it the lack of training and education to upgrade the skills of the local workforce, thus the delay in concurrent salary increases? But this aspect would seem a natural part of the process, isn\u2019t it? Anyway, what\u2019s the real issue in the continued imposition of poverty income for these many workers?<\/p>\n
With poverty income families are forced to limit expenses to primary family obligations. It includes the first family home, food, car, utilities, medical care and other necessities. After these there\u2019s basically nothing left for other family needs.<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t engage in other family outings like taking the troops to the movies or stop somewhere for a sandwich. Poverty income limits everything to basic needs and obligations as to sacrifice casual family outings.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s my point? We need better answers than all the speculative queries raised herein. I challenge so-called leadership to resolve the issue forthwith. Or is the NMI suffering from leadership vacuum?<\/p>\n
Poverty:<\/strong> What\u2019s the root cause of this deepening mess and has this administration done anything concrete to ease family hardship in households throughout the archipelago?<\/p>\n It revolves around a single word most politicians have spouted with ignorance: economy. It is said that a healthy economy lifts all boats in the harbor. How sad that most boats are still stuck in the mud downstairs, though the tide has shifted.<\/p>\n Hope history isn\u2019t priming to repeat itself. Let the chapter I closed years ago stay shut. Enough of staring at boiled taro and salt for dinner or gulping faucet water for breakfast before heading to class in the morning. Enough of the wraths of abject poverty!<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard telling families caught in this hardship otherwise. They know their school-age kids head to class hardly equipped with basic needs like breakfast, school supplies and decent clothing. They sigh daily praying for help, any help.<\/p>\n Unstated:<\/strong> It\u2019s the perennial issue of an uncertain economy that moves north and south happily and unpredictably throughout the course of the year. Eh, it still is the economy, stupid! Did you get that, pal?<\/p>\n Appalling the perennial attitude knowing the beast yet we treat it like some filthy leper who walks by under our nose successfully each trip. It must be policymakers\u2019 conundrum founded on ignorance or sheer negligence or both. <\/p>\n Then they return to acknowledge in grand redundancy that employees are still earning poverty level income. When do you put your best foot forward to resolve the issue? You already have an idea so what\u2019s your next plan of action?<\/p>\n The NMI isn\u2019t necessarily at its best from an organizational standpoint. We heard the economy is on the uptick. Was an effort made to identify which sector improved and would it do better if we rally behind strengthening it? Must secure a sense of purpose to morph into knowing what\u2019s in your bag at any given time.<\/p>\n Leadership:<\/strong> Delegate Kilili has reached an agreement with the House Nutrition Subcommittee chair on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to include the NMI in the program. It stands a good chance when national Democrats take over the U.S. House of Representatives this midterm election or January.<\/p>\n Kilili said he\u2019s doing the negotiations a year in advance, adding that food stamps here has doubled where some 3,610 families will be eligible by October or next month. He\u2019s infused some $32.5 million into the 2014 Agricultural Act.<\/p>\n He pointed out plans by the NMI government to cut benefits and push more families out of the program this year. \u201cI must get the NMI into SNAP\u201d via federal law to make its implementation here mandatory, he noted.<\/p>\n The NMI and Agriculture Department took their time ramping up the pilot program, thus the delay, Kilili noted. \u201cThere\u2019s still some $22.5 million in unspent funds for 2014.\u201d Grandly admirable the courageous ideological assertion to cut dependency on food stamps among the indigenous people. <\/p>\n But if Guvana Raffet hasn\u2019t improved the strength of the family purse, wouldn\u2019t food stamps denial deepen familial hardship? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The CNMI has created the elite versus non-elite class in wages and salaries. We now…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[42,257,67,22822],"class_list":["post-285561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-food","tag-nmi","tag-people","tag-unstated-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285561","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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}