The House minority bloc expressed skepticism yesterday with the administration\u2019s statement that a payless payday was imminent for government personnel.<\/p>\n
Rep. Ramon Tebuteb, spokesperson for the minority group, accused the Executive Branch of \u201cblackmailing\u201d public sector employees into consenting to a wage reduction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sounds like a far-fetched threat, addressed especially to those opposing [the wage cut plan],\u201d Tebuteb said.<\/p>\n
He also criticized press secretary Charles P. Reyes Jr. for implying \u201cthat people don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about\u201d and that \u201cthe public was not as smart as him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tebuteb said that the administration should provide the public with more specific information about the government\u2019s financial situation to make the people understand.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t threaten my people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Reyes said on Monday that the Department of Finance was scrambling for funds to meet the next payroll. According to Antonio Muna, the governor\u2019s special assistant for budget and management, the government spends $6.3 million on personnel every pay period.<\/p>\n
Reyes also said that an actual payless payday would, hopefully, \u201cdrive home the point\u201d that the government is in a serious financial condition.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe if they don\u2019t get their paychecks, that\u2019s when people will start realizing the urgency of our problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The House minority bloc expressed skepticism yesterday with the administration\u2019s statement that a payless payday was imminent for government personnel.<\/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-99898","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\/99898","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=99898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}