Pond Island – TelEm Group CEO, Kendall Dupersoy, says the company is well on the way to restoring its telecommunication infrastructure to pre Hurricane status thanks to the continued hard work of technical staff and the addition of local contractors and telecommunication experts from Curacao. According to Mr. Dupersoy, there are now more cell sites (15) in full operation with 10 cell sites providing partial operation. This is a vast improvement on the situation just three weeks ago when the last update was given by the technical team,” said Mr. Dupersoy. Mr. Dupersoy is especially pleased that amongst the cell…
Author: The Publisher
HILVERSUM – Constitutional law professor Arjen van Rijn is critical about the “reluctant attitude” of the Ministry of Home Affairs towards municipalities that refuse to register homeless citizens from St. Maarten, Natasja Gibbs reports on Caribisch Netwerk. Haarlem and Leiden continue to refuse to register people who fled St. Maarten after Hurricane Irma. According to Van Rijn, these municipalities incorrectly maintain that “the status of the refugees from St. Maarten is unclear” and that they prefer to wait for guidelines from the ministry. “Nonsense and unnecessary delaying the situation,” Van Rijn says. “There is already a guideline: the law. The…
By Arjen van Rijn It is a familiar pattern in St. Maarten: the incumbent cabinet loses its majority in the Parliament. Every year it’s the same story. In September 2015 two ship jumpers crossed over to the opposition for inexplicable reasons while Prime Minister Marcel Gumbs was unaware of this, sitting in a plane flying back from New York. The rumor at the time was that this was about financial gain. The new majority wanted to start governing immediately after the crisis of confidence had been formalized. After many controversies an interim-cabinet was established and a year later there were…
The mud-slinging competition between disgruntled politicians is already in full swing and the Parliament has not even passed the motion of no confidence against the Marlin-government yet. It promises to be an interesting time that is ahead of us. With accusations flying to and fro, the average reader will soon be left scratching his head, as it will become near impossible to separate fact from fiction. Under those circumstances, it comes down to who you want to believe; facts be damned. The main players in our political arena have been at this game for decades. They know how it is…
GREAT BAY – Months before Hurricane Irma devastated St. Maarten on September 6, there were already “secret meetings” with at least two Members of Parliament. The Democratic Party was hell-bent on leaving the coalition,” Prime Minister William Marlin said at Wednesday’s Council of Ministers press briefing. Marlin said that the new majority in parliament is “based on ship jumping” and that his government had prepared legislation to prevent this. “MPs jump ship for personal gain,” Marlin said, adding that the draft legislation would allow ship jumpers to retain all their rights but one: the right to be involved in the…
PHILIPSBURG – “I made fiscal discipline a passion during my tenure,” Minister of Finance Richard Gibson Sr. said on Wednesday during what could have been his last appearance at the Council of Ministers press briefing. Describing the three stages after Hurricane Irma – relief, recovery and rebuilding – he said that it was necessary to prepare a new 2017 budget, because the current budget is “no longer based on reality.” The minister presented an amended budget to the Council of Ministers that has in the meantime been approved. “It contains additional expenditures; the amount for onderstand (social welfare) has been…
PHILIPSBURG – “Before Friday we were asked to agree to something of which we did not know the details,” Justice Minister Rafael Boasman said at Wednesday’s Council of Ministers press briefing. Boasman said that he had received the draft mutual agreement about border control only last Friday after 5 p.m. “On Sunday I discussed it with Chief Commissioner Carl John and Anthony Doran of the Customs Department. I did not foresee any problems.” Boasman reiterated that border control has been a joint effort with the Royal Marechaussee from long before 10-10-10 and that the cooperation “is not in bad shape.”…
Philipsburg; In separate letters directed to the Prime Minister of Sint Maarten, Mr. William Marlin and the President of Parliament, Mrs. Sarah Wescot-Williams, the International Ombudsman Institute (IOI) expressed sympathy to the government and the people of Sint Maarten in the aftermath of the recent hurricanes. Both letters go on to say that the IOI is conscious of the enormous task ahead of rebuilding the country and the resilience required from the community. Consequently it pledges full support and backing from the international Ombudsman community to the Ombudsman institutions in the region, and wishes the Governments, Parliaments and the people…
Oyster Bay — This Tuesday, the Sint Maarten Hospitality and Trade Association (SHTA) held its first post-Irma mixer on October 31st. The event was hosted by Infinity Restaurant, reopening as of today. By means of the mixer, SHTA invited its membership to convene for the first time after hurricane Irma. The meeting functioned as a platform in exchanging business insights on dealing with its aftermath. 150 Representatives of Sint Maarten’s business life turned up at Infinity, Oyster Bay Beach Resort’s largest restaurant. The association deems it important that Sint Maarten’s business society comes together and shares practices in dealing with…
PHILIPSBURG – Prime Minister William Marlin made a very serious accusation that Minister Lee is deliberately withholding the delivery of relief goods from the people in an attempt to make the government and Prime Minister look bad in order to justify a change in government. Minister Lee stated, “It is really sad that the Prime Minister would sink so low to try and blame the entire Ministry of VSA with an out and out lie. This is clearly a desperate attempt by a seasoned and cynical politician to shift the public’s anger away from himself in order to hold on…
