The CNMI has already spent roughly $18 million to sanitize various government and private facilities since the COVID-19 pandemic started in the CNMI last March 2020. <\/p>\n
Speaking at last Friday\u2019s COVID-19 forum at Kensington Hotel Saipan, Patrick Guerrero, the governor\u2019s authorized representative, said the CNMI has spent close to $18 million of its own local funds for this purpose. \u201cIt comes from local funding and we get it reimbursed,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He said he cannot pin down right now what the exact tally is but \u201cwhat I could share with you is that overall, in the CNMI, since March of 2020, we\u2019ve spent close to $18 million on disinfection services everywhere, whether it\u2019s a hotel, airport, or vaccination site,\u201d he said<\/p>\n
\u201cThe protective measure in our COVID-19 operations is to disinfect places that are high risk. We do disinfection at the airport, down at the vaccination sites, and we also disinfect every hotel room after positive cases\u2014and even non-positive cases\u2014check out. We\u2019ve disinfected government agencies and offices [as well],\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
To date, the CNMI has already received reimbursements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for earlier disinfecting jobs, he said. \u201cFor some of the earlier months during this pandemic and we still continue to submit these costs to FEMA for review and reimbursement,\u201d Guerrero stated. <\/p>\n
He explained that although $18 million seems like a large number, you can\u2019t put a price on the safety of the CNMI community.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe we can\u2019t put a price tag on the safety of our community and of our citizens. If that\u2019s what it costs, at the end of the day, all these costs are eligible reimbursement costs under FEMA\u2019s program. We will get reimbursements for all this money that we spent while also continuing to safeguard our community,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The CNMI government has contracted five different disinfecting companies, including JOGO, Pacific Oriental, Safety Management Systems, among others. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey all provide service up to a certain level. They all have disinfection programs that we\u2019ve looked at and they continue to meet our needs,\u201d he stated. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The CNMI has already spent roughly $18 million to sanitize various government and private facilities…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":362162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362161","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}