Philipsburg — The Basic Police Training (BPO) for the recruits that was postponed last year due to the passing of hurricanes Irma and Maria has restarted. Chief Inspector Rob Appelhof from Police Academy in the Netherlands in charge police training for the Dutch Caribbean has again arrived on Sint Maarten to restart this training. Rob Appelhof regularly travels to Sint Maarten on work related visits and was also on the island during the passing of hurricane Irma. He commends the police force for a job well done in the aftermath of the hurricanes with the focus on keeping Sint Maarten…
Author: The Publisher
PHILIPSBURG – The €550 million reconstruction fund the Netherlands has made available to St. Maarten will be deposited as a grant into a trust fund at the World Bank. How the money will be spent and made available – in the form of grants or soft loans – is part of a process in which St. Maarten and the World Bank identify priorities for the reconstruction. State Secretary Raymond Knops said on Wednesday at a press conference that the current discussion is not only about loans and grants but also about the channels that will be used to disperse the…
GREAT BAY — Former Prime Minister William Marlin on Thursday attempted to clear the air on what he says are outright lies being planted in the community by members of the United Democrats to gain political mileage in the run up to snap parliamentary elections. Marlin made clear that his intention is to simply correct the lies being peddled by the party to gain sympathy from the electorate. Members of the party have been using issues such as the container at the border, the 2017 St. Maarten Day wreath laying photo op, and the Oyster Pond issue to claim that…
PHILIPSBURG – The trial of Keith F. – one of the suspects in the so-called Emerald-investigation – offered a candid insight in the way fraud was committed with inflated invoices at the Harbor Group of Companies on Thursday morning. The 53-year old owner of KG Construction invoiced the harbor between 2013 and 2016 for $891,901 and failed to report this income for income and turnover taxes. The prosecution put the fiscal disadvantage for the tax inspectorate at 756,618 guilders and demanded a 15 month prison sentence and a conditional fine of 250,000 guilders against the defendant. Unlike the defendants that…
PHILIPSBURG – Post Hurricane Irma insurance premiums are likely to go up between 30 and 60 percent according to Dwayne Elgin, chairman of the St. Maarten Insurance Association. Elgin mentioned the percentages on Thursday afternoon during a central committee meeting where he answered questions from members of parliament. Elgin said that the insurance companies had received 6,100 claims after Hurricane Irma, for a total value of $667,060,000. Of these claims, 4,764 (78 percent) have been settled and paid. The total payout so far is $303,700,000 (46 percent of all claimed damages. These numbers represent 85 percent of the insured market…
GREAT BAY — Sint Maarten Pride foundation board members Jadira Veen (president) and Barbara Cannegieter (secretary) sends a letter to his Excellency Eugene Holiday, Governor of Sint Maarten, and to the Dutch Representative in Philipsburg, Chris Johnson. In that letter Sint Maarten Pride foundation requests the intervention of the both the Governor and the Dutch King in the situation with the dump. The letter reads as follows: Your Excellency, The Sint Maarten Pride foundation, a community environmental nonprofit foundation, has been noting frequent violent landfill fires that have been flaring up before and after hurricane Irma. Even more worrisome is…
GREAT BAY – On Tuesday February 6, 2018, the Ministry of Finance of the Government of Sint Maarten organized a Round Table Conference “Sustainable Financial Government,” with the Netherlands, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Committee for Financial Supervision of Curacao and Sint Maarten Cft. The goal of this conference was to get all parties together and have an open dialogue on the way forward to a financial sustainable Sint Maarten and how progress can be achieved in bringing relief to the people of Sint Maarten in the short term. The main topics discussed was the…
Philipsburg – On Thursday afternoon a delegation including Prime Minister Leona Romeo Marlin, Minister of VROMI Miklos Giterson and State Secretary Raymond Knops visited 2 of the 480 homes that have been selected for reconstruction in the Roof Repair Program that is being executed by the Government of Sint Maarten. “I am confident that we are heading in the right direction as the Government of Sint Maarten continues to develop programs that will assist and bring relief to persons in the community”, said Prime Minister Leona Romeo Marlin following meetings with State Secretary Knops. The objective of the tour was…
PHILIPSBURG – The House of Parliament will sit in an urgent Central Committee meeting on February 9, 2018. The minister of General Affairs as well as the minister of Public Health, Social Development and Labor and the minister of Public Housing, Spatial Planning, Environment and Infrastructure will be present. The Central Committee meeting which was adjourned on Wednesday, February 7, 2018 will resume on Friday at 15.00 hrs in the General Assembly Chamber of the House at Wilhelminastraat #1 in Philipsburg. The agenda point is: Discussion about the current situation at the dump including possible solutions. Members of the public…
Philipsburg — The St. Maarten Carnival Development Foundation (SCDF) on Thursday released the inspection schedule for all vehicles that will be included in Carnival road events. Annually the foundation, together with the police department, structures a schedule for inspections to ensure that all vehicles are up to code. Band trucks, trailers, float vehicles, promotional vehicles are all inspected before they are allowed to be used in jump-ups and/or parades. “Safety in Carnival is still are first priority,” SCDF president Alston Lourens said. “SCDF road events travels along very narrow road ways with thousands of people as onlookers. These onlookers are…
