PHILIPSBURG – Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs declared the state of emergency for St. Maarten on Saturday. The measure goes into force on Sunday, April 5, for a period of two weeks. Nobody will be allowed to be on the road, or even near a public road. Supermarkets are closed and religious gatherings are prohibited. The state of emergency is regulated in the relevant national ordinance (Landsverordening uitzonderingstoestand). Jacobs said at a press conference on Saturday that there will be a 24/7 curfew. The measure can be extended when it ends on April 19 if necessary. The state of emergency gives…
Author: The Publisher
Photo caption: Holland House Beach Hotel also completely shutdown as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. PHILIPSBURG – Most of the 51 units at the Princess Heights Boutique Condo Hotel in Oyster Pond are empty these days but its partial owner, former Minister of Public Health Emil Lee, says in an article published in the New York Times that the business will be able to weather the corona-crisis until the end of the year. “If it goes past Christmas then you need to look at how to restructure.” For other businesses in St. Maarten, Lee is more pessimistic: “Past four…
PHILIPSBURG – St. Maarten was made aware that the Netherlands would be returning three of the detainees on March 28, 2020, who were transferred to the Netherlands due to the state that the Pointe Blanche prison was in after Hurricane Irma. During the discussions with the Netherlands concerning the transfer of the detainees, it became evident that it was not possible for the detainees to remain in the Netherlands any longer. Considering the limited resources that St. Maarten has, Prime Minister and Chair of the Emergency Operations Center EOC, Silveria Jacobs, made a strong plea to the Dutch Minister of…
PHILIPSBURG – Medicosmetics provides faulty testers for people suffering from diabetes, the Antipoverty Platform and the Consumers Coalition said through their spokesman Drs. Raymond Jessurun at a press conference last week Thursday. SZV acknowledges that there are problems with Medicosmetics but declined to react to the specific allegations Jessurun made during the press conference. Medicosmetics is established in Cole Bay; its Facebook-page mentions Jan H.R. Beaujon as its director. The company positions itself as “a wholesaler and distributor of ethical pharmaceutical supplies.” Medicosmetics also sells medical health supplements, professional hair and skin products and “home health care supplies from beds…
PHILIPSBURG – Prijsstijgingen in de supermarkten zorgen voor een storm van klachten op social media. Food shoppers plaatsen foto’s van items die twee weken geleden een stuk minder kostten dan nu. ‘Ze nekken ons met deze prijzen’, schrijft een klant. De eigenaresse van een supermarkt in Philipsburg zegt dat dit ook geldt voor winkeliers. “Onze marges zijn nog maar de helft, of minder zelfs.” De verhuurder van het pand waar de supermarkt is gevestigd is op 31 maart de huur komen innen. Het personeel was al eerder uitbetaald. Aan het begin van deze maand heeft de winkelier niet veel geld…
PHILIPSBURG – Price increases in supermarkets trigger a storm of complaints on social media. Food shoppers post pictures of items that cost a lot less two weeks ago than they do now. “They are killing us with these prices,” one customer writes. The owner of a supermarket in Philipsburg says that this also applies to retailers. “Our margins are only half, or less, even.” The landlord of the building where the supermarket is located came to collect the rent on March 31. Staff had been paid before. At the beginning of this month, the retailer does not have much money…
PHILIPBURG – Party for Progress Members of Parliament Melissa Gumbs and Raeyhon Peterson walked out of an online meeting of parliament on Monday when it was about to handle the resignation of the (already departed) Chief Financial Officer at the airport. The meeting had to be adjourned because after the departure of Gumbs and Peterson it no longer had a quorum. In a way, the PFP wrote history: it is the first faction to log off from a digital meeting of parliament. PFP party leader Gumbs issued a statement to clarify the decision to leave. “The personal decision of a…
PHILIPSBURG – Use the balance of the World Bank Trust Fund to finance a $200 million emergency economic response to support the local economy. That is the focus of a proposal by a private sector task force to the Ministry of Tourism and Economic Affairs (TEATT). The business community will need support for a period of seven to eight months, its report states. The suggested measures include 90 percent payroll subsidy for a period of three months and a 75 percent subsidy for the next five months. Fixed expenditures should be fully covered according to the proposal. It furthermore suggests…
PHILIPSBURG – CIBC First Caribbean donates $250,000 through its international ComTrust Foundation for the purchase of COVID-19 testing kits to the sixteen countries across the Caribbean where it operates. If evenly divided, each country will receive $15,625. The bank will make its donations through its operating companies in each country. Colette Delaney, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer and also the chairlady of the Comtrust Foundation, announced the donations in a press statement, saying, “Testing was one of the main weapons in the arsenal against the spread of the disease. Community spread is one of the main ways the virus is…
On St. Maarten, banks and the government are advising the general population to use guilders as much as possible, as a way to save dollars. I agree wholeheartedly with this advice. Here is why. When the dollars stop flowing into our economy, using guilders for our daily transactions will keep our economy going and save the dollars to pay for our imports. When those dollars run out, we will have to use our ‘gold backed’-Guilder to buy new dollars to pay for new imports. Hence the title of this article, The Golden Guilder.
