THE resident director of the Tinian Office on Aging shut down the island’s manamko’ center on Tuesday after the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. disconnected its power.
In a disconnection notice, CUC informed the Tinian Office on Aging that it had to purchase “more load” for its pre-paid power connection.
The Tinian manamko’ center serves 75 senior citizens on island, Tinian Office on Aging Resident Director Anne Marie San Nicolas said.
Of this number, she added, 33 come to the center for meals and other services while 42 others are homebound and/or bed-ridden.
She said most of the manamko’ on Tinian are widows or widowers without anyone to take care of them.
San Nicolas said she was done cooking food for the manamko’ when the power went out at around 6 a.m. Tuesday.
She said she had to close the center because it would be too hot for the manamko’ to stay there. No power means no air-conditioning, she added.
She said she waited until around 7:30 a.m., hoping it was an unannounced power interruption. She later went to the Tinian CUC office where she was told that the Tinian Office on Aging’s pre-paid power account had already been exhausted.
San Nicolas said the Tinian Office on Aging consumes $5,000 worth of pre-paid power in three months.
In October, she said they were able to get assistance from the Saipan Office on Aging to purchase $5,000 in prepaid power load. However, she said, CUC had yet to receive the funds, and that’s why they were disconnected.
San Nicolas, who comes to work as early as 5 a.m. every working day, said she will continue to cook food for 75 senior citizens although Tinian’s manamko’ center will remain closed until power is restored.
In October, Tinian Mayor Edwin P. Aldan asked the Office of the Governor and the Department of Finance for assistance in paying Tinian’s utility bills, “but both requests have gone unanswered.”
Last week, the Senate failed to garner enough votes to override Gov. Arnold I. Palacios’s line-item veto of utility cost allotments for the Rota, Tinian and Saipan municipalities in Public Law 23-9 or the Fiscal Year 2023 Appropriation Act.
Tinian Sen. Karl King-Nabors told his fellow senators that “it would be impossible for the municipalities of Tinian and Rota to shoulder the payment of utilities for the eight executive branch departments without any appropriation of funds.”
