Mendiola, Covenant-Tinian, said, the administration wants $1.3 million budget for the desk audit but only $300,000 can be appropriated by the Department of Finance.
“With that limited resources, they are going to do certain things, but not a complete audit review,” Mendiola said.
The desk audit will have to “target” “important discrepancies” in Civil Service job positions and Civil Service exempt positions.
Earlier, Sen. Maria T. Pangelinan, D-Saipan and chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Fiscal Affairs, disclosed discrepancies in various government job positions and descriptions as well as their salary scales.
She said the administration should observe the civil service wage structure.
According to Pangelinan, based on her review of the government’s hiring process, existing job positions and their corresponding salary rates, there are different pay scales under similar job titles.
Accordingly, there are government employees who were hired under the Civil Service job and wage structure and employees hired through an exemption from the Civil Service mandate.
Pangelinan said there “seems to point to a systematic pattern of circumventing the civil Service system for two purposes: to hire for particular position and assign a salary above the grade approved by the civil service, [or] to assign a salary lower than the approved grade.”
The CNMI government is the main employer of local residents.
