SGMA president James Lin and his wife Mary went to CHC to personally hand a check to Department of Public Health Secretary Joseph Kevin Villagomez and CHC Volunteers Association president Kim Prinz.
Lin said the $5,000 is the association’s “last money.”
SGMA, he said, has been donating money to different community groups since the association was formed more than 20 years ago.
“We’re using the remaining SGMA funds to donate to the CHC volunteers — we’ve been helping them for the past 27 years,” Lin said.
Villagomez said SGMA has always been a big supporter of the CHC volunteers.
Prinz said their group is very grateful to SGMA, and the donation will help them raise funds for the purchase of hyperbaric or decompression chamber which is worth $475,000.
The equipment is necessary for treating diabetic patients and diving accident victims.
Before 2005, there were more than 20 garment factories on Saipan that contributed millions of dollars in user fee to the government.
At its peak, the industry’s annual gross revenues reached $1 billion.
The garment factories, however, were exempted from paying the business gross revenue tax.
At the behest of the industry, moreover, the CNMI government froze the local minimum wage rate and hired the now disgraced Washington, D.C. lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
A 1999 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of the Interior disclosed that the cost of hosting the industry exceeded the revenue it contributed to the CNMI.
With the liberalization of international trade rules in 2005, local garment factories have to compete with their counterparts in Third World countries with much lower labor costs.
Most of the Saipan factories have moved to those countries.
Lin’s Saipan garment factory, the United International Corp., was among those that shut down last month.
