~ “With a well-functioning Cadastre it is impossible to establish long lease twice on the same parcel of land.” ~ PHILIPSBURG — Minister Egbert Doran (Public Housing, Urban Planning, Environment and Infrastructure – VROMI) has issued a piece of land in Hope Estate in long lease for the construction of social housing, while a company called High Tech Development has held the same plot in long lease since 2012. MP Raeyhon Peterson, a member of parliament for the Party for Progress and a former acting head of Domain Affairs said during the budget debate in Parliament that he remembers the…
Author: The Publisher
~ John A. Richardson on the challenges that being a senior brings ~ Mr. Editor, Please allow me some space in your well read newspaper to share my observations with the general public, your readers. One of the first things I remember from school was when it comes to math, there is an order of operations. Just like everything there is a sequence to doing and implementing things. We can choose to deviate from the order, we will always get results but those results will never be as good as when the proper sequence is followed. In other words consistency…
PHILIPSBURG — Finance Minister Ardwell Irion allocated himself a travel budget of NAf 60,000 for 2023, an increase of 601.39% compared to 2022. Tourism Minister Leo Lambriex has 100 percent more to spend on travel than his predecessor Roger Lawrence. Their budgets, as well as those of Health Minister Omar Ottley and Minister of Justice Anna Richardson, exceed that of Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs. The Prime Minister has only NAf 15,300 to spend on travel this year, a reduction of 69.41%. The 2023 budget of Government is showing “cuts, cuts and more cuts”, the opposition in Parliament noted. But there…
By Hilbert Haar If people need proof of how disinterested the government is in the wellbeing of the citizens it is supposed to serve they should read the advice from the Social Economic Council (SER) about lottery booths on our island. What do we read there? For almost thirty years viable data available about gambling addiction has not been available. In other words: the government had better things to do. The legislation that regulates what lottery license holders can and cannot do is a joke. The SER found that the responsible ministry issues licenses “indefinitely” and the conditions attached to…
PHILIPSBURG — The Social Economic Council (SER) sent its advice about the placement of lottery booths in low income areas to Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs on February 14. It is hampered by a lack of data. The advice does not establish the number of lottery booths on the island before Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 compared to the present. It also does not give any insights in the impact of lottery booths on low income areas. Party for Progress leader Melissa Gumbs asked Jacobs on October 29, 2020, to request an advice from the SER. Jacobs waited more than…
By Hilbert Haar Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs has “a great deal of sympathy” for MP Rolando Brison and his family, she wrote in a press statement issued on March 19. The statement is a reaction to Brison’s arrest as a suspect in a bribery-investigation. Not a word about bribery being one of the ills that is gnawing at the very foundation of our country. But Jacobs went a few steps further than expressing sympathy for a suspected criminal. She saw fit to write that it is “uncanny” that the investigation surfaces “at times when they can negatively alter local political…
PHILIPSBURG — Citizen John A. Richardson has approached the Ombudsman in an open letter with a request to investigate the fairness of St. Maarten’s fiscal system. The letter addresses in particular the failure of the legislative branch to establish under which conditions taxes can be forgiven completely. Richardson writes that the tax system treats pensioners unfairly, because the SVB-pension “is not a livable one” and because “any additional income is taxed more than proportionally.” He refers to the tax collection ordinance of 1970 that authorizes the receiver to grant a postponement of payment. If payment is not possible, taxes can…
~ Wants to teach students to place security issues in a broad perspective ~ PHILIPSBURG — A delegation of NHL Stenden, a college established in Leeuwarden, was in St. Maarten consisting of Denise Jacobs, Sander Mooibroek and Marije de Bruin. Jacobs is the former head of the National Detectives Agency (Landsrecherche) and of the Detective Department of the St. Maarten police force KPSM. The mission: increasing awareness about security in the broadest sense. Jacobs teaches Safety and Security Management and Policies at NHL Stenden’s faculty of Safety and Security Science, which is a part of NHL Stenden’s Thorbecke Academy. NHL…
PHILIPSBURG, Sint Maarten — Prime Minister and Minister of General Affairs Ms. Silveria Jacobs was shocked and concerned when she was informed of the news of the detention of Member of Parliament Rolando Brison on Friday, March 17, 2023. The Prime Minister wishes MP Brison and his family as well as the UP party much strength during this very difficult time, while awaiting the process of the judicial system and is very happy to learn of the MP’s release on Saturday evening. “I have a great deal of sympathy towards the MP and his family; matters such as these leave…
Generally speaking the task of the Ombudsman purports among others to investigate individual complaints against government. I believe that in this instance this threshold is met. The scope of taxation affects everyone in Sint Maarten. Differently put, I would like you to examine if the principles of good governance is adhered to by government and the way the executed policies affect the citizens. The individuals, whose plight I wish to address in this open letter is that of my fellow citizens and particularly that of the pensioners. When the pensioners were in their productive years, they contributed widely to making…
