The former Marianas Public Lands Authority’s dispute with the Pacific Telecom Inc. over underground cables will be settled out of court, Gov. Benigno R. Fitial said yesterday.<\/p>\n
The governor himself is negotiating with PTI to come up with a settlement agreement on the abolished MPLA’s demand that the telecommunications company pay easement fees for cable lines buried in public lands.<\/p>\n
“We don’t have to go to court to settle that. It’s too simple. What they [PTI] offer is actually too much and we’re ready to accept too much because we need money,” said interim Public Lands Secretary John Del Rosario.<\/p>\n
Fitial echoed Del Rosario’s statement, saying: “We do not support that lawsuit. We support an amicable resolution. That [lawsuit] was another case of wasteful spending because [the dispute] could be resolved and it will be resolved.”<\/p>\n
The Micronesian Telecommunications Corp, which PTI acquired last year, laid underground cable lines on public lands in the CNMI in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
The lines were buried to ensure continued communications and the people’s safety during typhoons and other calamities.<\/p>\n
But the former MPLA, which is now Department of Public Lands, maintained that PTI must pay easement fees for the use of the public lands for the cables.<\/p>\n
Negotiations between the two parties reached a deadlock, causing MPLA to file a lawsuit against PTI.<\/p>\n
The Senate last month adopted a resolution urging the then MPLA to enter in a memorandum of agreement with PTI providing that the telecom firm award CNMI indigenous students with full educational scholarships in lieu of paying rental fees to MPLA.<\/p>\n
Authored by Senate President Joseph Mendiola, S.R. 15-05 maintained that such an arrangement would “conceivably end the impasse in negotiations between MPLA and PTI and provide an amicable solution to the present dispute.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The former Marianas Public Lands Authority’s dispute with the Pacific Telecom Inc. over underground cables will be settled out of court, Gov. Benigno R. Fitial said yesterday.<\/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-98323","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\/98323","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=98323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}