PHILIPSBURG — Financial supervisor Cft has expressed serious criticism about St. Maarten’s approved 2020 budget in a letter to Finance Minister Ardwell Irion dated May 20. The letter became public this week. The Cft urges St. Maarten to amend its budget, among others by budgeting for improvements at the Pointe Blanche prison and to include these investments in the capital account. In 2019 the government budgeted 5.7 million guilders ($3.18 million) for improvements to the detention situation, but because the country did not receive the required loan for it, the project stalled. This investment is not part of the capital…
Author: The Publisher
PHILIPSBURG — Former Minister of Justice and Attorney at Law Roland E. Duncan says that it is nearly impossible to revoke a person’s permanent residence permit. It is difficult to send them back to their country of birth or bar them from coming back to the island. “These persons with permanent residence documents must first commit a very serious crime before they are repatriated to their home country,” Duncan said. StMaartenNews.com contacted Duncan after the Minister of Justice, Anna E. Richardson announced to the general public in a media statement on Wednesday that the immigration laws of Sint Maarten will…
By Hilbert Haar MP Grisha Heyliger-Marten is on the decolonization warpath. She has called Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs to parliament asking whether she is prepared “for the process of finalizing decolonization and assuming more autonomy to govern.” Heyliger-Marten is ambitious: she wants to finalize what she calls the decolonization process by July 1, 2021 – that’s, give or take, a bit more than twelve months from now. The way things go in St. Maarten (it took forever to change the rules of order for the parliament and becoming an autonomous country took ten years) this is obviously a mission impossible.…
PHILIPSBURG – The labor unions and the Council of Ministers still have not reached an agreement about the 12.5 cut in the labor conditions for civil servants – a requirement for receiving continued financial support from the Netherlands. From a press release issued by the CCSU (Committee Civil Servants Unions), it appears that the unions are willing to agree to the deferral of certain entitlements but that they want to get that money back in subsequent years. As the latest in a seemingly endless series of proposals and counter-proposals, the unions proposed on June 1 a deferral of 50 percent…
PHILIPSBURG—Prime Minister, the honourable Silveria Jacobs, will have to say whether the Government of St. Maarten is prepared for the process of finalizing decolonization and assuming more autonomy to govern when she appears before Parliament soon. She has been requested to answer questions on decolonization by Faction Leader in Parliament for the United People’s Party the Honourable Grisha Heyliger-Marten. Heyliger-Marten brought forward her first motion to finalize of the decolonization of the Caribbean Netherlands, which started seventy years ago, on the anniversary of her 100th day as a sitting MP, May 20. On June 8, she sent a letter to…
PHILIPSBURG – The government – and government-owned companies in its wake – is playing with fire and is putting continued financial assistance from the Netherlands at risk by not following an advice from financial supervisor Cft about the distribution of payroll support. Currently, the government had divided companies into three categories; those who have lost between 20 and 50 percent of their turnover since the outbreak of the corona-virus crisis fall into the “moderate impact” category. Turnover loss of between 50 and 80 percent is considered as “moderate high impact” and turnover losses that exceed 80 percent are “high impact.”…
PHILIPSBURG – In a blistering letter, attorney Cor Merx has terminated his membership of the United People’s Party (UP). Merx participated in the elections in January, winning 40 votes as the UP’s number 18 candidate. Now he has turned his back on the party: “There is no team. It is one individual cause, one individual direction, one individual agenda.” In an email to StMaartenNews.com Merx writes that there is no ship-jumping “because there is no ship. We are on a barge without navigation and without a captain. We’re drifting off course and we are not doing what we promised.” Merx…
PHILIPSBURG – Based on current regulations, the government will not be able to publish the names of companies that have so far received payroll support. Finance Minister Ardwell Irion said during a press briefing that 479 companies had received funding from the program, and SMCP-leader Wycliffe Smith recently asked the government to publish the names of these companies. Public Health Minister Richard Panneflek has tasked SZV with the execution of the program, but the ministerial decree that regulates this contains an article that looks like a confidentiality clause: “The USZV does not provide information about individuals or companies to third…
PHILIPSBURG – The business license process at the Economic License Department is cumbersome but there is plenty of room for improvement, it appears from the General Audit Chamber’s report entitled ‘Audit into the business license process and the possibilities of digitizing.’ The Minister of Tourism and Economic Affairs, Ludmila de Weever, read the report before its release and had no comments on its contents. In 2019 the license department received 579 business license applications. While the department aims to issue these licenses within six weeks, it managed to do this only with 16 percent (95) of them. Processing the bulk…
PHILIPSBURG – Unlike St. Maarten, the island of St. Barth’s has all its ducks in a row for reopening to tourism. But regulations put in place by the French government frustrate these efforts. Collectivité of Saint Barths President Bruno Magras addressed the issue in a scathing letter to the French Minister of Overseas Territories, Annick Girardin. Former parliamentarian Claude ‘Chacho’ Peterson labels Magras’ action as an example of how St. Maarten ought to change its attitude towards its kingdom bosses. Magras notes in his letter that St. Barths has not had a single new case of COVID-19 during the past…
