Gov. Ralph DLG Torres is disappointed with the delay in the U.S. Air Force\u2019s divert facility construction project on Tinian, but said he understands the challenges the U.S. government is going through, especially when it comes to the lack of construction workers.<\/p>\n
In an interview with reporters last Friday at the Office of the Governor\u2019s conference room, Torres said the U.S. government has the same challenges regarding the divert airfield project that the CNMI is going through in terms of the availability of available labor.<\/p>\n
The governor said he just want to make sure that the divert airfield project is still a U.S. government priority even if it extends or delays it for one year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as I know, it\u2019s delayed but is still a priority, a top priority,\u201d he said, adding he is hoping the U.S. government would continue to move forward with the project and expedite it even early next year. <\/p>\n
Commonwealth Ports Authority board chair Kimberlyn King-Hinds recently confirmed that the initial bids for the divert facility construction project exceeded the U.S. government\u2019s estimate and procurement level, which means the construction project will not likely begin until 2022.<\/p>\n
King-Hinds said the resulting delay is not surprising, given that they warned the U.S. Department of Defense early on in their discussions about the challenges regarding limited housing on Tinian and the need to import labor, among many other issues that will impact the cost of construction because of the island\u2019s location and certain labor policies.<\/p>\n
CPA, the CNMI government, and the U.S. Department of Defense signed a 40-year lease agreement for the project in May 2019. In fact, CPA has already received the lump-sum payment of $21.9 million for the lease. The deal will allow the Air Force to build an alternative landing site for its planes\u2014a divert airfield\u2014on Tinian in case the Anderson Air Force Base in Guam is inaccessible due to war or calamities. <\/p>\n
Torres said even the CNMI has many challenges in getting enough manpower for a lot of construction projects. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re building Route 35, the Bird Island inner-island connection, we have the Airport Road, Obyan Road, the Industry Road, Beach Road. So just that alone\u2026\u201d said Torres, adding that they have also Public School System\u2019s building of campuses and the Northern Marianas College. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built. I hope that by the time [we start these projects] we will have construction workers to address our immediate recovery plan,\u201d the governor said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres is disappointed with the delay in the U.S. Air Force\u2019s divert…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":340594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[320],"class_list":["post-340545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340545","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=340545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}