THE HAGUE--Dutch State Secretary of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Raymond Knops will arrive in St. Maarten this Sunday for a four-day working visit to the three Windward Islands.
On Monday, the State Secretary will be in St. Eustatius for meetings with authorities and to hold a town hall meeting in the evening hours. The State Secretary will give an explanation to the Statia residents about the state of affairs regarding the process to restore the public administration. The Dutch government decided to take over the island’s administration in February 2018 due to gross neglect of duties by the sitting government at that time.
Asked for a comment on his visit to St. Eustatius after Friday’s Kingdom Council of Ministers meeting, Knops said: “I find it very important to have direct communication with the residents. We have done so from the start of the intervention. In my opinion, people who live there and are directly affected, should hear from me how I perceive things and where we are in the process.”
The State secretary Knops will visit Saba on Tuesday. Here, he will visit the Fort Bay Harbor and receive an update on the harbor project and meet with local authorities. Later that day, Knops will fly to St. Maarten, where the focus of his visit will be on the concrete results of the island’s reconstruction after Hurricane Irma.
The State Secretary will meet with the St. Maarten and he will visit a number of projects that are made possible with Dutch government financing through the Trust Fund, including the restoring of houses.
On Wednesday morning, Knops will have a meeting in St. Maarten with representatives of the Public Entities Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba to discuss the general development on the islands and the cooperation with the Netherlands. Late Wednesday afternoon, the State Secretary and his delegation will return to the Netherlands.
