The House remains wary over the proposed power privatization, saying that it has not been getting necessary information about the plan.<\/p>\n
Vice Speaker Timothy Villagomez, who led a public hearing last week on privatization and other utility issues, said there remains legal impediments that have yet to be resolved.<\/p>\n
\u201cMembers of the PUTC panel are just concerned that the Legislature is not being well informed about the status of this procurement,\u201d said the lawmaker, who chairs the House Committee on Public Utilities Transportation, and Communications.<\/p>\n
These impediments, he said, include the dispute between the CUC and Commonwealth Development Authority, land concession, and employees\u2019 tenure.<\/p>\n
He said that CUC has already received three proposals for the power plant privatization.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re now processing and making the review of the proposals,\u201d Villagomez said.<\/p>\n
CUC board chair Frank Guerrero, for his part, assured the House that the utility firm is handling the issue very thoroughly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no awarding of contract here yet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said that the CUC\u2019s consultant, the Harris Group, would meet with CUC officials end of this month to report on the companies that submitted proposals. The proposal solicitation had ended on Jan. 7.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers have been demanding more information from CUC on the proposed privatization of the government’s power plants in Lower Base.<\/p>\n
Minority bloc member Rep. Arnold Palacios had expressed shock that the CUC board had already voted to go ahead with the privatization without public consultation.<\/p>\n
“On what basis? Was there any study? Have you conducted hearings?\u201d he asked during a recent public hearing.<\/p>\n
Majority of the CUC board voted to pursue the power privatization since summer 2003.<\/p>\n
Guerrero had noted then that the board used a previous report that recommends the privatization of the power plants.<\/p>\n
The board also expressed confidence that the presence of Harris Group consultancy would result in excellent work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The House remains wary over the proposed power privatization, saying that it has not been getting necessary information about the plan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87385","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}