ASG officials cite Gita as reason for missed deadline

astca-building-aug-17

In support of the American Samoa Telecommunications Authority’s petition to the Federal Communications Commission for a waiver on the missed deadline for billing of E-rate services, Acting Governor Lemanu Peleti Mauga and Director of Education Dr. Ruth Matagi Tofiga both cite Tropical Storm Gita as the reason why ASTCA couldn’t meet the deadline.

The FCC has already denied ASTCA’s waiver request and the government’s phone company is seeking a reconsideration, which if not granted would mean a loss of more than half a million dollars in E-rate billing for ASTCA.

Acting Governor Lemanu, who is the Governor’s Authorized Representative for disasters, described in a June 3 letter to the FCC the challenges that the territory faced following Gita and said that the DOE and ASTCA faced an uphill battle as they worked to repair their facilities and restore services after the storm.

He said the people of American Samoa have already suffered tremendous devastation from Gita and pleaded with the FCC “not to make the damage even worse by preventing ASTCA from being paid for the services it rendered to our 17,000 school children.”

Lemanu states that without a favorable ruling, ASTCA risks losing out on badly needed revenues that it earned by meeting its services obligation. And local residents risk losing out on better and more affordable communication services in our schools, libraries, community college and hospital.

Director of Education Dr. Matagi Tofiga also told the FCC that ASTCA missed the filing deadline because it took DOE and ASG an exceptionally long time to negotiate and pay invoices for E-rate services following Gita.

As stated in ASTCA’s petition for a waiver, she said ASTCA had submitted the required documents to her department on time and followed up on numerous occasions but her staff was unable to pay those invoices quickly enough to allow ASTCA to meet its E-rate program deadlines.

She explained that DOE’s focus was on recovering from the aftermath of Gita and with limited resources, it took ASDOE longer than anticipated to complete the ordinary process “by which we routinely validate ASTCA’s and all other service providers’ invoices.”

She told the FCC that they have taken concrete steps to ensure that future E-rate deadlines are met and implored that E-rate funding was essential to adequately prepare the territory’s 17,000 school children to succeed in the increasingly digital global world.

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