{"id":293475,"date":"2019-02-08T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T20:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=293475"},"modified":"2019-02-08T06:00:44","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T20:00:44","slug":"sword-says-he-is-tired-of-similar-excuse-for-water-meter-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/sword-says-he-is-tired-of-similar-excuse-for-water-meter-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Sword says he is tired of similar excuse for water meter problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_293476\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-293476\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Sword-pix.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-full wp-image-293476\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-293476\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Commonwealth Utilities Corp. chair Miranda V. Manglona presides over a board meeting yesterday at the CUC conference room.  (Ferdie De La Torre)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>KKMP Radio Station vice president Gerhard \u201cGary\u201d Sword told the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. board of directors yesterday that he is tired of following up with CUC about the meter problem in their family compound in Papago. <\/p>\n<p>During the CUC board meeting\u2019s public comments, Sword, who was accompanied by his wife, former chief prosecutor Rosemond Santos, said that his wife\u2019s family has been pumping water into a tank at the bottom of the hill in Papago\u2014a family compound with eight houses\u2014because of lack of water pressure and re-pumping it to the top of the hill.<\/p>\n<p>Sword said they pay a flat monthly rate.<\/p>\n<p>In 2012, a meter was installed to supply water to the eight houses. Sword said they applied for seven water meters for each house, but there has been no result. CUC would just tell them \u201cthey are still waiting for engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In June 2012, Sword said, they applied for meter relocation when their bill went to $800 a month.<\/p>\n<p>He said they were given the same answer by CUC that \u201cthey are still waiting for engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After Super Typhoon Yutu, their water bill went up to $5,000 due to ruptured pipes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf CUC had done their job in the first place you won\u2019t hear from us,\u201d Sword told the board. \u201cYou have a social obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sword said he used to work for 14 years at a utilities agency in American Samoa.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know what I\u2019m talking about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He recommended that policy and standard operating procedures need to be developed to help customers with their water issues and assure that people conserve water.<\/p>\n<p>He said CUC\u2019s Customer Service representative should be given more authority to elevate the customer issues to upper management to assure that problems are resolved. <\/p>\n<p>CUC board chair Miranda V. Manglona assured Sword that they will look into the problem and \u201cavoid this unnecessary issue.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KKMP Radio Station vice president Gerhard \u201cGary\u201d Sword told the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. board of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":293476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293475","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}