During the negotiations of the second round of the seven-year Covenant funding, in which I was involved during the meeting held in Hilo, Hawaii, Mr. Montoya from the Department of the Interior, made it very clear that CUC should be generating enough income independent from government financial support after three years of its inception. The concept was to privatize the services provided by CUC and CUC should only monitor the utility rates. CUC should have been privatized 20-some years ago as required by Interior. The CUC statute was drafted by Interior before the end of the first term of the seven-year Covenant funding from the federal government.
The issue of privatizing CUC has been going on for years with bids solicited, cancelled, rebid, cancelled, with millions of dollars wasted on these bid proposals. CUC is still a political entity and will continue to be a political entity until we change its organizational structure and run it like a business entity. Employees managing CUC, especially for the higher positions, are appointed by politicians and not because they are highly qualified to run the only utility company here in the commonwealth. CUC needs highly qualified employees to efficiently operate the utility company with the goal of providing reliable power, portable water and sewer system all over the villages at affordable rates. CUC will continue to operate as it is today, run inefficiently and with excessive operating cost if we continue to authorize the politicians to manage CUC. In other words, we’ve to run CUC as a business.
Hire highly qualified employees, collect the mountains of receivables, complete the metering system, downsize un-necessary manpower, eliminate unnecessary operating cost, implement alternative energy sources and set a dateline for privatization. If you do all these recommendations, I am definite that CUC will be out of government financial assistance and will even make a decent profit. The utility rates for us consumers will become more affordable. Otherwise, if we continue to operate CUC as it is today, you will see us continue to suffer from high utility cost and unreliable services.
We have a house in San Diego, California which is one of the expensive areas to stay in the U.S. We never paid the amount of money for utilities that we are paying here on Saipan. Sometimes we turn on the air-con during summer and the heater during winter, but still our utilities bill are much much less in San Diego than here on Saipan. California has alternative energy sources, and utility charges are prorated based on the use of alternative energies.
I also understand that in Arizona, the federal government is experimenting with a new solar panel that is ten times more powerful in absorbing sun energy. Recently, I was talking with Mr. Sam McPheters about his son’s energy business. Sam told me that they are now looking at wind mill energy that is collapsible during inclement weather. This system might be good for the CNMI because of our weather: during a typhoon we could fold the wind mill blades and secure them. There are numerous alternative energy sources out in the market that are efficient, less expensive to operate and good for the environment. Let us not continue to talk and not do anything to implement these alternative energy sources. Do it now!
JUAN M. SABLAN
As Teo, Saipan
