PHILIPSBURG – The PFP Faction submitted questions to the Minister of Finance, the Honorable Ardwell Irion, on Monday, 17 August 2020. The faction referenced the letter sent by State Secretary Raymond Knops to the Dutch Second Chamber on August 14, 2020. The State Secretary’s letter informed the Dutch Second Chamber that St. Maarten had not yet met all the conditions for the second tranche of liquidity support, which meant that no discussion could be held for a future third tranche of support. In their questions to the Minister, PFP queried the discrepancy between the State Secretary’s letter and the Minister’s…
Author: The Publisher
~ No need for rules if common sense rules ~ PHILIPSBURG – The beginning of the new school year created a rather awkward situation, not only for the government, but also for schools and parents. While some schools want to open for business, others want to remain closed while parents threaten with legal action if they don’t open. StMaartenNews.com will attempt to make sense of all this by presenting an outline of the decisions and initiatives that were taken so far. Education Minister Drs. Rodolphe Samuel wrote a letter to parents and guardians on July 31, announcing the decision to begin…
In St. Maarten, the pandemic has made life very difficult for schools, teachers, and students. The choice is a familiar one by now. We must choose between safety for our children first and convenience. Or inconvenience, however you want to look at the options. Streaming live online classes into the homes of children until life is normalized will be a major challenge for parents of younger students. They are not old enough to go unsupervised. For the schools, the challenges are enormous. The Ministry of Education has produced an Education Continuity Plan, ECP, consisting of many pages outlining procedures for…
PHILIPSBURG – The bottom line of Education Minister Drs. Rodolphe Samuel to reopening the schools remains focused on three by now familiar issues: wearing facemasks, washing hands and social distancing. Nothing new there, but in the meantime the ministry as well as the schools are struggling with what is happening in the real world. Learning Unlimited preparatory school went to court to fight the closure of its business (and came out on top) and at the Caribbean International Academy CIA) the school wants to follow the guidelines of the ministry, but parents threaten to take it to court if it…
PHILIPSBURG – “It was never the intention of the Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport to close schools,” Education Minister Drs. Rodolphe Samuel writes in a letter dated August 16 to all subsidized schools and all private school boards. At the same time, Samuel urges schools to begin the new academic years with distance learning for a period of at least three weeks. On August 11, the minister instructed all private schools by letter to remain closed for onsite learning until further notice, but the court ruling Learning Unlimited obtained from the Court in First Instance shows that the…
PHILIPSBURG – Public Health Minister Richard Panneflek did not have the authority to close down the Learning Unlimited preparatory school as he did last week Wednesday, August 12. That is the essence of a ruling issued by the Court in First Instance on Friday, after the school took the country to court to contest the closure. “The large-scale deployment of police officers against small children is disproportionate and does not meet the requirement of subsidiarity,” judge Coen Luijks wrote in his ruling. Last week Wednesday the police prevented students from entering the school grounds at the instructions of Minister Panneflek.…
THE HAGUE – St. Maarten has so far failed to comply with the conditions attached to the third tranche of liquidity support from the Netherlands. State Secretary Drs. Raymond Knops stated in a letter to the Dutch Parliament that financial supervisor Cft once more had been unable to establish that St. Maarten had met these conditions. “This means that we will currently not initiate talks with St. Maarten about a third tranche of liquidity support. If St. Maarten still wants to have this conversation it will first have to prove to the Kingdom Council of Ministers via Cft that it…
PHILIPSBURG — In light of today’s meeting of the Kingdom Council of Ministers in The Hague, MP Claudius ‘Toontje’ Buncamper issued a statement to the press on Friday night urging the government of the Netherlands to come clean and stop hiding behind the CFT. The MP wants to know: “What are we really getting and what are we really giving?” The kingdom government has proposed a Caribbean Reform Entity (CRE) for the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curacao, Aruba and St. Maarten (CAS) as a condition for liquidity support needed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the CRE, the…
We are of the opinion that we had this corona virus since November/December last year, long before the worldwide pandemic and lockdown. It is only now it is really rearing its ugly because of testing when people exhibit flu-like symptoms. Now we would even venture to say that you can get infected multiple times just like with the common flu. Therefore, we believe we will really need a vaccine for this virus. Because people who are vulnerable can die from it. The only problem is that this virus can mutate, making it difficult for the vaccine to be effective over…
By Hilbert Haar It always had to come to this. Protecting public health is an obvious priority to anybody with half a brain but what about protecting the economy? It is a horrendous dilemma. I recently saw a cartoon showing a bunch of kids standing on a beach where they hear from their teacher: “It’s okay to go into the water now. Only one percent of you will be eaten.” In the distant past, former Central Bank President Dr. Emsley Tromp already knew what was coming when he Did the CFT set the Kingdom on fire? that you cannot protect…
