Marianas Public Lands Authority chair Ana Demapan-Castro\u2019s son-in-law and two other MPLA employees reported back to their Saipan offices on Tuesday after a 15-day official trip to Manila, the Philippines, with each of the employees earning per diem fees of $300 per day.<\/p>\n
Excluding the cost of travel and the training, per diem fees alone for the two-week trip would total $13,500.<\/p>\n
MPLA spokesman Ed Arriola, Jr. confirmed the arrival of Homestead Division inspector Anthony Benavente, Demapan-Castro\u2019s son-in-law. Arriola also said Real Estate and development Division James Fleming and systems administrator Frank Borja also reported back for regular work beginning Tuesday after completing a two-week computer course from DB Wizards.com, a Microsoft-certified school in the Philippines.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll these passed and got their certificates,\u201d Arriola said. \u201cThat helps a lot when they\u2019re into technology. They\u2019re young and energetic individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Demapan-Castro also said sending the three employees to the Philippines for training was in line with the MPLA\u2019s vision for a continuing education for its staff so they could become assets to the agency.<\/p>\n
The transition team for the MPLA has called for a review of off-island travels by the agency\u2019s officials and employees and recommended that the suspension of all travels outside the Commonwealth to prevent wasting financial resources through junkets.<\/p>\n
The transition team recommended the suspension of all-off-island travels, \u201cunless authorized by board action for a period of 90 days, or until the board of directors amend the current travel policy and procedures to maximize its financial resources and minimize junkets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marianas Public Lands Authority chair Ana Demapan-Castro\u2019s son-in-law and two other MPLA employees reported back to their Saipan offices on Tuesday after a 15-day official trip to Manila, the Philippines, with each of the employees earning per diem fees of $300 per day.<\/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-97660","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\/97660","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=97660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}