CUC’s Tinian resident director, Edward Quichocho, said four old and damaged engines were turned over to the mayor’s office three years ago with the approval of the then-executive director of the utilities agency.
“Those old engines were already scrap and were used at the old power plant in 2000,” he told Variety. “Since they were just sitting in the facility and were eyesore and no one came and expressed their interest to get them, CUC approved the mayor’s request to get these old engines.”
Quichocho believes that the engines were bought with local funds.
When the current administration declared a state of emergency for CUC, another equipment owned by the agency — a high-speed backup generator — was turned over to the mayor’s office.
Quichocho said although a request was made by the Tinian mayor’s office, the equipment was actually turned over to the municipality of Rota who made the request through the Tinian municipality.
Asked why CUC-Tinian gave away the still usable equipment, Quichocho said the island doesn’t need a backup generator as it has enough engines to supply power.
“We’re not using this high-speed generator and when the Rota municipality asked for this equipment for their use, we decided to turn it over to them so they can use it. But the transfer is legal and in fact, the parts were shipped first to Saipan prior to delivering them to Rota,” he said.
Quichocho said Tinian has four engine units with a capacity of 2.5 megawatts each, and two 5-megawatt engines for a total of 20 megawatts.
He said long power outages will only occur on Tinian due to reasons beyond CUC’s control.
CUC-Tinian fixes a technical problem in less than an hour, he added.
