{"id":324591,"date":"2020-06-10T06:03:54","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T20:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=324591"},"modified":"2020-06-10T06:03:54","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T20:03:54","slug":"house-panel-probes-covid-19-overtime-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/house-panel-probes-covid-19-overtime-contracts\/","title":{"rendered":"House panel probes COVID-19 overtime, contracts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Rep. Ralph Yumul (R-Saipan) shows copies of the letters of request sent to\u00a0Patrick Guerrero,\u00a0the Governor’s Authorized Representative, in relation to the inquiry being initiated by the\u00a0House Special Committee on Federal Assistance and Disaster Related Funding regarding\u00a0awarded contracts, newly-hired employees, and government hazardous and overtime payments related to the COVID-19 emergency and response operations. (IVA MAURIN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Responding to information sent from within the Torres administration, the Legislature has initiated an inquiry into awarded contracts, newly-hired employees, and government hazardous and overtime payments related to the CNMI government\u2019s COVID-19 emergency and response.<\/p>\n

The House Special Committee on Federal Assistance and Disaster Related Funding has asked Patrick Guerrero, the Governor\u2019s Authorized Representative, to furnish them with documents that include a complete list of all CNMI government employees receiving overtime payment related to COVID-19 operations.<\/p>\n

The committee also requested documents related to COVID-19 emergency contracts awarded to the Asia Pacific Hotels, which operates the Kanoa Resort; Pacific Oriental Inc.; Interpacific Resort Corp.; Medpharm Group of Companies; Five Star Builders; Island Image & Motion; Helios Energy Group; and Surf Rider Resort Hotel.<\/p>\n

Rep. Ralph Yumul (R-Saipan), who chairs the committee, said in an interview that \u201cthere is progress\u201d in their request, and that Guerrero has informed his office that the documents should be in by the end of the week. \u201cThe first step with the committee is to gather the information that other representatives have issues with, and then we\u2019ll go over it. If there are some discrepancies that need to be brought up, we call in the agencies involved, and have them put on record to explain to the people of the CNMI as to why this is going on,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Yumul also noted that they have learned from the \u201cmistakes\u201d from Super Typhoon Yutu and that they do not want such mistakes to happen again. \u201cThe legislative body has given so much resources to the administration, from borrowing funds and using some of the Casino License Fee. We\u2019ve given everything, and now we\u2019re basically asking what have they done with it, and we\u2019re making sure they\u2019re following the mandate of the people, that they\u2019re not going beyond and spending what there needs to be spent on,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Yumul also disclosed that they are conducting this inquiry due to information sent to their committee from staff within the administration. \u201cThe staff within the administration is sending information to us as to why is this going on. It\u2019s not the Legislature looking around, it\u2019s actually complaints that were sent to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t actually look for it,\u201d Yumul added. \u201cBut you\u2019d be amazed at what information comes here and it\u2019s within our own government body. We take it upon ourselves to really look into it. That\u2019s our job, we owe it to the people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Responding to information sent from within the Torres administration, the Legislature has initiated an inquiry…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":324592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-324591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324591","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\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}