A few Corrections officers and some inmates at the Department of Corrections in Susupe have tested positive for COVID-19, causing a severe manpower shortage at DOC. Some police officers were then sent to DOC to shore up its manpower but a few of them also caught the COVID-19 virus, thus depleting their manpower even more.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what\u2019s happening at DOC right now, according to House of Representatives vice speaker Blas Jonathan T. Attao (R-Saipan), who disclosed this situation yesterday at a House session in emphasizing the need to help DOC with its emergency hiring of Corrections officers to stem the worsening manpower shortage situation.<\/p>\n
He said a concern was brought up last week and over the weekend regarding DOC\u2019s situation as a few officers and some inmates have tested positive for COVID-19. \u201cTheir manpower is dwindling pretty quick,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Attao said DOC actually got assistance from the Department of Public Safety, which sent about 10 to 20 police officers to DOC to ease the manpower problem. Unfortunately, he said, many of those police officers also caught the COVID-19 virus. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo they\u2019re running on not even skeleton crew right now. They\u2019re really scratching the ground right now in regards to manpower,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Attao said a lot of Corrections officers are able to go home for a couple of hours, but have to report back to DOC as soon as possible because of the severe manpower shortage that they have. <\/p>\n
He said the proper House committee should look into this issue and look at the opportunity if there\u2019s financial assistance that could be extended to DOC or possibly request additional money via the $500 that is being entertained for the retirees\u2019 bonuses. He suggested to have some sort of an emergency hiring for the DOC, to assist them in their situation right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to provide those services. They have a grant that they have to abide by and, with the shortage of manpower, I don\u2019t know if we\u2019re going to be able to even live up to the grant expectations because of the lack of manpower that they\u2019re facing over there,\u201d Attao said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few Corrections officers and some inmates at the Department of Corrections in Susupe have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":358078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[446],"class_list":["post-358077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-doc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358077","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=358077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}