CNMI declares State of Emergency over disrupted communications
A state of emergency declared in the Northern Marianas on wednesday will allow the transfer of resourcesto help recover its disrupted communications network as soon as possible.
Transcript
The 30 day state of emergency declared in the CNMI yesterday (Wednesday) will allow the transfer of resources within administration, to help recover its disrupted communications network as soon as possible.
The state of emergency was declared by acting governor Ralph Torres, because of the disruption of critical infrastructure.
A recently severed fibre optic cable between Saipan and Tinian cut off all phone, internet, banking and other services to the outside world.
Our Correspondent in the CNMI, Mark Rabago, spoke to Indira Moala.
MARK RABAGO: What the declaration means is that the homeland security emergency management office, the local one, will be tasked to provide assistance and support and will be granted a temporary exemption from any commonwealth regulation as I said that would tend to prevent, hinder or delay any action for the government to accomplish the goal which is to put back the network system the internet, telephone lines, ATM connections and all that stuff that was severed because of the table being cracked, back online to normal operation. In this case the governor, the acting governor I mean Ralph Torres ordered homeland security to form a task force with IT&E our service provider to fix this problem as soon as possible. The emergency regulation basically helps the government marshal all resources to this end.
INDIRA MOALA: And just on the back of that as well does that mean they can transfer aid from other administrations, other departments to help towards finding a solution to this problem as soon as possible?
MR: I don't see them trying to get financial aid from other agencies because the problem is with IT&E and IT&E already came out with a statement that it would be costing them two million dollars to fix this cable. But they assure the public that they won't be transferring or having the public pay for this problem. So IT&E will be shouldering everything, there could be some administrative cost with the operations and stuff but its going to be minimal.
IM: Providing the fact that IT&E really are going to foot the bill for this the governor isn't looking at seeking Federal aid as well?
MR: They haven't touched on that yet, I think they are trying to fix it locally first and if they need some kind of assistance then they may ask Federal government.
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