A former manager of an IPI construction team said those working at the San Antonio warehouse are IPI’s H-2B workers from Mongolia while those working at the barracks in Garapan are H-2B workers from Taiwan.
Variety was told that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rules prohibit H-2B workers from working outside the geographic areas or occupations listed in their job order.
For his part, acting DPW Building Safety Officer Isagani Salazar said IPI is not necessarily disregarding the stop-work order, which was issued due to violations of the building safety code at its Garapan construction site.
On Monday, construction workers were seen boarding an elevator at IPI’s Garapan construction site.
On Thursday, IPI Holdings Board of Directors Chairwoman Cui Li Jie was seen supervising workers performing a landscaping job at the construction site.
Asked for comment, the IPI construction team said, “IPI was supposed to resume some work on Nov. 9th…but Monday morning IPI got a call from a DPW officer who said IPI cannot work inside [the] hotel,” including “site cleaning outside the hotel.”
“So IPI stopped all workers from going into the…hotel. The workers only worked at some warehouses by instruction of DPW,” the IPI construction team added.
On Tuesday, the IPI construction team’s resident project director, Jing Zhou, submitted to DPW the names of engineers of record or EOR and inspectors — an electrical engineer and an architect from Guam and a mechanical engineer based on Saipan. Zhou also submitted copies of their certificates.
In his letter, Zhou said IPI has appointed DR Constructors and CM MEP Inspectors to conduct most of the onsite inspections.
He told DPW that these engineers will conduct the inspections along with DR Constructors’ staff, and will cover mechanical, electrical, plumbing and safety including fire sprinklers and fire alarms, as well as architectural and structural issues.
But Salazar said DPW still could not allow IPI to move ahead with the construction until IPI submits copies of job contracts between the three engineers and DR Constructors.
Construction managers who were recently terminated by IPI said that “in complete disregard of DPW’s stop work order, the IPI management instructed their employees to work on site on Monday, Nov. 9.”
But the workers were later told to leave the job site.
Since March, the IPI casino has been shut down “until further notice” because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
