~ Found Tuesday ~
PHILIPSBURG--Finance Minister Richard Gibson said on Wednesday that the paperwork approving certain payments and promotions for members of the disciplined services “seemed to have disappeared” and only had been found and reached his desk at 5:00pm Tuesday.
Gibson, who had met recently with representatives of the police unions on their grievances, said he had only learnt on Tuesday that some of the issues regarding promotions and payments for these workers had been approved already.
“The paperwork relative to all of these payments seems to have disappeared and this is a problem throughout Government – documents keep mysteriously disappearing and it lends to dissatisfaction and confusion,” Gibson, who is also the Acting Justice Minister, told reporters at the Council of Ministers press briefing.
“A manhunt was started to find where these documents were, to be able to execute them because they were already approved. That was not an easy task for my cabinet at the Ministry of Justice, but eventually they were found.
“Some were half completed. In fact, it was only yesterday afternoon at 5:00pm that these documents landed on my desk and when I looked at them they had negative advices from the various departments that related that there are no funds. That’s the situation that I was confronted with and I was trying to get to the bottom of.”
Gibson said he had managed to finalise some of the paperwork and others he would have to hold off until January. He said the country’s Criminal Code stipulated that any Minister who knowingly signed documents obligating Government to pay out funds when none were available was punishable by law with imprisonment of up to three years. He said this law existed so that Government could stick to its budget and not accumulate huge debts the country would have difficulties paying.
“Going forward, we need to learn to work together, understand problems … solve problems, and with some good will it eventually will be solved, but if I am a Minister for one minute, one day, 30 days or a month, the confusion which exists in departments is my responsibility and I accept that responsibility and apologise for the confusion that is there. It is a problem that has to be fixed in Government and it will be fixed, but it will be fixed the way it should be fixed.”
Gibson said a long list of items that dated back six years had been tabled by the police unions during his earlier meeting with them and he had explained the country’s financial situation to them and informed them that he was working on the 2016 budget and needed an opportunity to address these issues. The budget has since been finalised and will be presented to the Council of Ministers today, Thursday, for approval.
Gibson alluded to the situation at Princess Juliana International Airport SXM last weekend, where Immigration officers left their posts to attend a meeting, resulting in long lines of tourists waiting to be processed. He said the tourists had suffered “discomfort” in the situation and it sent a signal that “we do not have our situation under control.”
Gibson said the situation was “quite unfortunate, because it does not help the situation that we are in. It aggravates it. We have to expand this economy, we have to get more tourists in. We need to increase the revenues that we earn annually and we can only do that by being better at the only product, the core of our economy, and that is tourism.
“Of course this situation that we are in creates frustration for everyone, which I understand. But that frustration is not going to be helped by making matters worse than they are. It takes cooperation and patience. You don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.”
