Boxes of personal protective equipment are piled near the Koblerville Fire Station.
HOUSE Floor Leader Edwin Propst finds it “pretty disturbing” that boxes of personal protective equipment or PPE have piled up like trash next to the Koblerville Fire Station.
He said “millions of dollars” were spent on the PPE, purchased during the Covid-19 pandemic, but it was never used.
During the miscellaneous part of the House session on Thursday, Propst said he was informed that it cost the CNMI government over $1 million to store the PPE for the past three years.
Rep. Vincent “Kobre” Aldan, in an interview, said the discarded PPE was stored in a commercial warehouse in San Antonio, and that the CNMI Homeland Security and Emergency Management office had been paying the warehouse $32,000 a month to store the boxes of PPE.
Aldan said HSEM decided to move the PPE out of the commercial warehouse.
“Why would the cash-strapped CNMI government continue to spend money for something we no longer use?” Aldan asked.
Waste of funds
Propst said he brought up the issue in light of the CNMI government’s financial challenges, which include the lack of funds for the Health Network or medical referral program and the group health and life insurance for government employees.
Propst said there are “so many other issues while there [are] millions of dollars of unused PPE in Koblerville.”
Who should be held responsible? he asked. “That is my frustration today and it has been my frustration from Day 1. No accountability….”
He said the CNMI received tens of millions of American Rescue Plan Act and other Covid-19 relief funds from the federal government, but “we do not hear from the federal government — nothing from the FBI, nothing from the U.S. Attorney’s Office; nothing.”
Propst said he fears that wasteful spending is going to continue until someone is held responsible. “Somebody got rich off of it — somebody made millions of dollars, and they continued to order, despite having all of them,” he added, referring to the unused PPE.
“How much will it cost us to dispose of it…properly?” he asked. “We just can’t throw it in the transfer station….”
To address the government’s financial problems, he said lawmakers should “come up with some alternatives to raising taxes. I pay enough for beer as it is, I don’t want to pay more, but I’m willing to do so if there’s no other alternative…. I really hope something is done about all of that misspending.”
The House on Thursday passed a bill to impose an excise tax on imported betel nut and lime mix. House members are also considering bills to raise the marriage license fee as well as the tax on soft-drink and alcoholic beverage containers.
