A Norwegian family which sailed from St. Maarten to Curaçao last Sunday and arrived there last night, is refused by the Curaçao authorities due to COVID-19 lockdown. The Coast Guard threatens to tow the ship to the open sea. The couple and their five-year-old son left St. Maarten aboard the Escape West on March 15 when the sea borders in the Caribbean were still open. A berth was reserved for the sailing yacht Escape West in the marina of Seru Boca in the eastern part of Curaçao. The harbor master informed the skipper that the crossing could be made. This…
Author: The Publisher
By Hilbert Haar We are all in the same boat and it is now a matter of rowing in the same direction. That’s the conclusion of an analysis published in the Antilliaans Dagblad (AD). The analysis is – like everything else these days – about the devastating effect of the corona-virus on the global economy and about the role the Kingdom of the Netherlands has to play (or should play) towards its overseas brethren in the Caribbean. The AD writes that it expects the Netherlands to agree with supporting the Caribbean islands based on the calamity regulation because of damages…
The corona-virus in Kuala Lumpur: Nobody seemed familiar with the term social distancing By Hilbert Haar I briefly wondered whether it was wise to travel abroad towards the end of January. We wanted to escape the extreme heat in Siem Reap, Cambodia, for the months of March and April when the mercury can shoot straight through the 40-mark. Would that damn corona-virus get in our way? By then, I knew that the situation in China was bad, but Cambodia had not reported a single case of infection yet. Nobody was dying and Siem Reap’s watering holes along its Pub Street…
PHILIPSBURG – Bedrijven en winkels in Philipsburg zijn gesloten, scholen in Front Street en Back Street zijn dicht. De stilte in de stad wordt slechts verbroken door sporadisch verkeer en het gekraai van hanen. Behalve Downtown, daar klinkt gehamer en gedril van boren. Het Rode Kruis timmert er aan daken van woningen. De teams werken tot het einde van de week door, in afwachting van verdere instructies in verband met het coronavirus. Het Rode Kruis op St. Maarten heeft de beschikking over 3 miljoen dollar van de Wereldbank, via het St. Maarten Recovery Trust Fund, voor herstel van 200 daken…
PHILIPSBURG – Businesses and shops in Philipsburg are closed, schools in Front Street and Back Street are closed. The silence in the city is broken only by sporadic traffic and the crowing of roosters. Except for Downtown, where hammering and drilling is heard. The Red Cross is building roofs of houses. The teams will continue to work until the end of the week, pending further instructions regarding the coronavirus. The Red Cross on St. Maarten has access to $3 million from the World Bank, through the St. Maarten Recovery Trust Fund, for the repair of 200 residential roofs. This repair…
PHILIPSBURG – “Wie in de molen terecht komt, kan erdoor vermalen worden.” Dat stelt advocaat Robbert de Bree, die erop wijst dat zijn client JanHendrik Boekaar, ontslagen directeur van Windward Roads wel betrokken is bij omkoping, maar hier niet mee is begonnen. Windward Roads huurde, met medeweten van moederbedrijf Janssen de Jong, al van begin jaren negentig Ronald Maasdam, hoofdverdachte in de Larimar zaak, in als ‘lobbyist’. Betalingen aan de politiek vonden vermoedelijk al plaats lang voordat Boekaar in 2005 directeur werd. Hoofdverdachte Ronald Maasdam heeft, in ruil voor vijftig procent strafvermindering en een 3.1 miljoen dollar in compensatie,…
PHILIPSBURG — “Those who end up in the mill can be ground through it.” That is the view of lawyer Robbert de Bree, who points out that his client JanHendrik Boekaar, dismissed director of Windward Roads is involved in bribery, but did not start it. Windward Roads, with the knowledge of parent company Janssen de Jong, hired Ronald Maasdam, prime suspect in the Larimar case, as a ‘lobbyist’ from the early 1990s. Payments to politicians probably took place long before Boekaar became director in 2005. Prime suspect Ronald Maasdam, in exchange for a 50 percent sentence reduction and a $…
PHILIPSBURG — United St. Maarten Party (USP) Member of Parliament (MP) Claudius Buncamper has sent a letter to the Chairlady of the Ad-Hoc Committee for Electoral Reform, MP Grisha Heyliger-Marten, requesting that she convenes a meeting to address the matter of Electoral Reform, starting with an evaluation of the existing proposals that aim to address the current situation with the objective to present a legislative amendment. MP Buncamper stated in his letter to the Chairlady that during the most recently held parliamentary election all political parties that contested that election raised the issue of electoral reform with the main concern…
EOC UPDATE: Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs on Travel Restrictions to St. Maarten (March 15th, 2020) The travel restrictions announced in Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs’s second National Address on March 14th, 2020, are hereby further clarified. PHILIPSBURG — On March 17th, only incoming visitors from the USA, Canada, Europe, UK and Ireland are restricted to enter the country of St. Maarten. This does not apply to St. Maarten/St. Martin residents, as well as residents and nationals of the surrounding islands who utilize Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA) as a transit point. Travelers from around the Caribbean region are not restricted unless they…
PHILIPSBURG – Inmates at the Pointe Blanche prison have finally had enough. A group of 37 inmates is going to court on Friday, March 20, in an attempt to force the authorities to relocate them to prison facilities in the Netherlands or on Bonaire. This should not surprise anyone: according to the inmates St. Maarten is unable to guarantee their safety in Pointe Blanche; they also say – not for the first time – that the conditions under which they have to live are inhuman. How did it get so far? The deplorable conditions in Pointe Blanche have a long…
