WITH four months left in the current fiscal year, none of the U.S. insular areas have availed of the $2 million worth of pre-disaster mitigation grant.
Vicky C. Villagomez, the government’s capital improvement projects administrator, yesterday said they were preparing a grant application that will be submitted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The commonwealth has to compete with American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the different Native American tribes for the grant.
“We are aggressively pursuing this grant,” Villagomez told Variety.
She said her office has to submit a “standard plan for mitigation.”
A two-day presentation on available federal grants was held on Rota last June 3 and 4, on Tinian last May 27 and 28, and on Saipan last May 24.
In related news, administration officials met yesterday morning to discuss the status of the CNMI’s federal grant applications.
The Office of the Governor vowed to work closely with the Washington Representative’s Office in securing these grants.
The meeting was presided by Gov. Juan N. Babauta and attended by Washington Rep. Pete A. Tenorio, senior policy advisor Robert Schwalbach, special assistant for policy and research Sonya Artero, acting Commerce Secretary Fermin M. Atalig, the governor’s legal counsel Pamela Brown, and Maya Kara, the legal counsel of Lt. Gov. Diego T. Benavente.
