PHILIPSBURG — The Supervisory Board of Directors and the Management Board of NV GEBE took notice of the contents of a letter by a member of the Supervisory Board of NV GEBE addressed to the Prime Minister of Sint Maarten that circulated in social media and was the subject of an online newspaper article. NV GEBE fully distances itself from what can only be qualified as deliberate incorrect factual representations of a seemingly disgruntled member of the Supervisory Board. A member who has been held responsible by all other members of the Supervisory Board on repeated occasions, the last time…
Author: The Publisher
St. Maarten, Cul de Sac – The Foundation Judicial Institutes St. Maarten (SJIS) and the (4C) Foundation/NPOwer are hosting a Kick-Off virtual meeting for Not for Profit Organizations (NPO’s), in an effort to engage more organizations in signing up for participation in the Judicial Community Service program of the SJIS. SJIS consists of a government-subsidized Probation and Parole Department that is responsible for the execution of community service orders by the Court and Prosecutors Office on St. Maarten. Community service is ordered for minor offenses, offenses that are not serious that warrants detention and involves a person doing voluntary work…
PHILIPSBURG — The budget to maintain the landfill is lowered by 610,000 guilders in the draft 2021 budget. Member of Parliament Claudius Buncamper (United St. Maarten party) wants to know from Minister Egbert Doran (Public Housing, Urban Panning, Environment and Infrastructure – VROMI) how the government believes it will be able to afford “any effective changes” with such a curtailed budget. MP Buncamper posed thirty questions to the minister, but his most extensive queries were about the landfill, a project he is familiar with given his previous function as the government’s head of infrastructure. Buncamper notes that the contracts for…
PHILIPSBURG — Is the projection of 3 percent economic growth this year on the low end and therefore too pessimistic? That’s what MP Claudius Buncamper wants to know from Minister Ludmilla de Weever (Tourism and Economic Affairs). “Do you stand by this number minister even though home porting is to bring in $52 million, more airlift is already in progress and the hotels are doing much better business than anticipated? Can you indicate what you believe in will be in reality seeing the present economic activity?” MP Buncamper fired 37 questions at the minister during last week’s Central Committee meeting…
PHILIPSBURG — “Does the government presently have a policy to handle the outstanding tax collection seeing the pandemic we are in, or are we bullying taxpayers into paying or losing their property?” This is one of 38 questions MP Claudius Buncamper posed to Finance Minister Ardwell Irion during last week’s central committee meeting about the draft 2021 budget. Buncamper also questions the logic of sending out “so many automated tax assessments that we all know are not correct.” He suggests having someone review these assessments before they are sent, rather than spending a lot of efforts and money on paper,…
PHILIPSBURG — The budget for the office of the prosecutor general increase by 125 percent to more than 1.5 million guilders. “That’s an increase of 863,000 guilders,” MP Claudius Buncamper notes in one of his 23 questions to Justice Minister Anna Richardson during last week’s Central Committee meeting about the draft 2021 budget. “Why is this and what is the justification?” Buncamper also asks why the budget for salaries at the Prosecutor’s Office shows an increase, “while salaries are being frozen at the government apparatus.” Practically all questions for this minister are of a financial nature. An example is the…
PHILIPSBURG — The draft 2021 budget is sloppy and a step back “due to its many grammatical and legal-technical mistakes,” the Council of Advice writes in its analysis of the budget that is currently under discussion in the Central Committee of Parliament. The Council notes that the objective to cut 12.5 percent of the labor conditions for civil servants has not been accomplished. According to the Council, the savings add up to just 4.8 percent. The draft budget maintains that it has implemented the cuts for parliamentarians and ministers (25 percent) and for civil servants (12.5 percent). For parliamentarians, this…
THE HAGUE — State Secretary Raymond Knops (Kingdom Relations) released the fifth tranche of liquidity support to St. Maarten. The Netherlands will transfer 39 million guilders ($21.8 million) by the end of next week, around June 25. In a letter dated June 17, Knops writes to the Second Chamber that St. Maarten has worked “energetically on the restoration of good governance at the Princess Juliana International Airport,” adding that Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs informed him and the Royal Schiphol Group several times about the state of affairs. The state secretary emphasizes that these measures are of a structural nature, meaning…
Dear Editor, Not so long ago we had the saga at the airport which led to the firing of the CEO, who was later reinstated by a judge because of technicality. One would think that this would be a wake up call for the present government of Sint Maarten. But lo and behold it is their way of dealing with corporate governance and the civil code, book 2. I come to this conclusion reading an advice that was rendered to the PM by the CGC on April 14, 2021. Is this incompetence or mismanagement of all the government-owned companies?You judge…
PHILIPSBURG — The Corporate Governance Council expressed concerns in its advice on the possible appointment of Sharine Daniel as the next Chief Executive Officer of utilities company GEBE that are somewhat surprising, considering the doctoral study Daniel did to obtain her title at Walden University in 2020. While the Council does not directly oppose her appointment as CEO, it has “some reservations.”
