Visiting Department of the Interior Assistant Secretary for Insular Affairs Tony Babauta will announce the awarding of a grant for the health center which he will tour on Friday morning. Babauta will be on Saipan today.
Tinian Mayor Ramon M. Dela Cruz earlier said their island badly needed medicine and better medical facilities and equipment because of their distance from Saipan where the only public hospital in the Northern Marianas is located.
In case of emergency, a Tinian patient still has to be airlifted to Saipan.
Only a six-seat plane serves the Saipan-Tinian route on a regular basis.
Babauta is scheduled to tour this morning Saipan Southern High School which has an alternative/renewable energy project funded by the federal government.
He will also tour the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. power plant in the afternoon.
Babauta arrived on Guam on Monday with White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman Nancy Sutley and other federal and military officials to hold talks with different community groups and local leaders about the military buildup project.
President Barack Obama was scheduled to make a one-day stopover on Guam last Monday en route to his state visits to Indonesia and Australia but cancelled those trips due to the health care reform bill’s passage in the U.S. Congress.
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