Transcript
MONICA MILLER: What I gathered from Governor Lolo at a emergency cabinet meeting, which he let the media attend, well part of the problem is that their projections as far as collections haven't panned out and that's partly because of the situation with the canneries, where one cannery closed and then they are also facing an uncertainty with regards to federal grants. According to the governor, he has been on the phone with the department of interior, which oversees the territory and funds that we supposed to have received by now. He said that there's really no telling when that money is coming in because the government here received an operation grant from the department of interior and then there's a lot of other federal grants that come in, but he said that conditions in Washington are such that a lot of key appointments, particularly for people who deal with the territories haven't been made by the president, so he told the cabinet, you know, lucky if we get to June and the money has arrived. He told the directors that it will be unpopular with the employees, but they knew when they came in 2013, that's when governor Lolo came in and most of the cabinet that's there now were from that time that they would be coming to a day like this, you know, Washington federal money is not going to be around forever.
SELA JANE AHOLELEI: With the employees, they are obviously really not that ecstatic about this, but the locals over in American Samoa, have they had any views on what is happening at the moment?
MM: You know I think that judging from the comments that have been put on our website from readers, they are asking why not get rid of people who are retired and some of them have two or three pay checks already because they retired from either the military, so they get that retirement check, and then there are also employees who have also retired from the government, but are still working, so why not get rid of those people and continue with the ones that are in the workforce now, you know, the young people. There was also some suggestion that those in the higher income level, take a bigger cut, well those at the bottom of the scale be exempted, you know, there are some employees that are earning ten thousand dollars, but the governor said for now let's just do this and he said that even if your department is funded by a federal grant, everyone is going to be affected by this except for those accepted employees and he also wants the semi-independent authorities like the utility company as well as the phone company to be included, normally those are exempted from reduction in hours.
