~ St. Maarten removed from IASA List ~ PHILIPSBURG — St. Maarten was recently removed from the International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) list on which it was previously listed as a Category 2 (CAT 2) Country. St. Maarten’s removal is based on there being no current St. Maarten airline servicing any United States destination, neither has there been a codeshare agreement with any US carrier and a St. Maarten airline for 4 years. It is standard under such conditions for the International Program and Policy division of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States Department of Transportation (DOT)…
Author: The Publisher
~ advises on alternatives ~ PHILIPSBURG—“In my opinion pensioners should not be paying wage taxes or income taxes,” said President of WIFOL Theophilus Thompson. According to him they have already contributed to social economic development and what they are receiving is solidarity social returns because of the contributions that they have made, he said. “What they have done is an investment in the earlier years and as a result they are getting back some returns,” said Thompson. He feels that the seniors should not be at that stage paying any levies on the benefit that they are receiving. However, if…
PHILIPSBURG — Government needs to be proactive instead of reactive to stem the high cost of services, goods and labor since the passage of the hurricanes of 2017. “We have seen the house rents, food commodities and cost of housing skyrocket to astronomical prices,” said the president of WIFOL Theophilus Thompson. He mentioned that the cost of living has risen to at least 200% while income/wages remain the same and in some cases it has declined. He explained that in a capitalist system it is designed in such a way that advantage is taken, opportunities are looked at where there…
By Hilbert Haar The expression caught between a rock and a hard place does not begin to describe the situation St. Maarten finds itself in now that the Kingdom Council of Ministers has put conditions in place for the provision of liquidity support. I can already hear members of Parliament moan about abuse of power by the Netherlands, but the conditions the Kingdom put on the table on Friday are mostly self-inflicted injuries. Some of them can be cured easily and doing this quickly would at least show the Kingdom a sign of good will. It would buy the country…
THE HAGUE — St. Maarten will only get liquidity support from the Netherlands in 2019 if it complies with several conditions the Kingdom Council of Ministers has put in place. “These conditions see – among other things – to the detention capacity, the remuneration and fringe benefits for members of parliament, the deployment of the National Police and pension reform,” State Secretary Raymond Knops (Kingdom Relations) wrote in a letter dated April 5 to the Second Chamber. While the letter does not mention further details, the Kingdom Council of Ministers apparently demands that the country increases the detention capacity at…
By Hilbert Haar When parliaments speak, governments have to listen. Those iconic words came from Jeroen Recourt, leader of the Dutch delegation after a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Kingdom Consultation (Ipko) in 2015. Recourt thought that establishing a dispute regulation was only a matter of months after the four Ipko-delegations had reached an agreement. The dispute regulator would have to be an independent body, its rulings had to be binding and countries could only submit legal disputes to the regulator. That Recourt was overly optimistic at the time is clear by now. Years went by without a dispute regulation. And…
PHILIPSURG — Members of Parliament Rolando Brison, Silveria Jacobs, Tamara Leonard Claude Peterson will travel to the Netherlands for an April 13 to 21 mission to discuss the upcoming vote in the Dutch parliament about the draft dispute regulation State Secretary Raymond Knops submitted to parliament on November 29 of last year. Knops’ draft does not sit well with the parliaments of St. Maarten, Curacao and Aruba. During an Inter-Parliamentary Kingdom Consultation (Ipko) in 2015 the delegations of the Netherlands and the delegations of the three Caribbean constituent countries in the kingdom reached an historic agreement about the dispute regulation…
DUTCH QUARTER — The Dutch Quarter sewerage project which took off with a quite an impressive start is now stalled for financial reasons. This project which is financed by European funding is said to have stopped because the contractor did not receive any funds from government to pay the employees. Minister of Finance Perry Geerlings when questioned at the Council of Ministers Press Conference on Wednesday, said that they are now “working on it.” Meanwhile, the island utility company GEBE is still busy with connecting and the regulating the water aspect of the water for the community. While residents have…
PHILIPSBURG — The delegation headed by Finance Minister Perry Geerlings to a meeting with the bondholders and the Princess Juliana International Airport in the United States is said to have went well. The meeting was to persuade the bondholders who had apparently loaned some $125 million in 2012 to the airport to hand over the funds that they received from the insurance company to help in the reconstruction of the airport which was severely damaged by the storms of 2017. Minister of Finance when questioned about the results of the meeting said that the delegation had an opportunity to meet with…
~ no objections against the verbal declaration of approval of credentials of Jules James ~ PHILIPSBURG — Opposition members of Parliament made a song and dance about procedural matters in a meeting on Monday afternoon designed to examine – again – the credentials of substitute MP Jules James. Accusations against chairlady MP Sarah Wescot-Williams of misleading Governor Drs. Eugène Holiday and manipulating the agenda of Parliament from the opposition benches fizzled when the chair wanted to address these accusations during the closing of the meeting; all opposition MPs left, leaving the meeting without a quorum. National Alliance and United St.…
