Dear Editor,
For the last couple of weeks, I have been visiting some neighborhoods in Sint Maarten to listen to the concerns of the people.
What strikes me the most is the situation of so many women on Sint Maarten. I am, like them, very concerned about the youth and their education, the migration situation and the struggles of the women to make ends meet on Sint Maarten.
Sint Maarten has many single women taking care of their children. Most of them are in an all-day-long working situation, sometimes working shifts or 10 to 16 hours a day to make ends meet, every month again. The consequences are, that our youth is left alone and can get involved in negative attitudes or even in crime. This has a negative effect on our social development, our economy and at the end our culture.
We have still a way to go to empower our women and make them more independent in life and to make it possible they spend more quality time with their family.
Some things can be done to break this vicious circle, which is affecting our social welfare negatively. Government needs to join with stakeholders to come up with programs to strengthen our women with handicraft-skills and entrepreneurship training and guide them in such a way that they can create their own jobs.
Government needs to look deeper into the 6 months labor contracts in the light of the labor rights.
There needs to be a match of people’s skills with what is needed on our labor market.
Furthermore, specific attention needs to be given to equality versus equal rights for women in comparison with the men. Equal treatment needs to be given to women when it comes to opportunities and salary.
The youth can be strengthened with more guidance and facilities and education to reach their full potential. We need to bring more sports activities in the lives of our youngsters, so they can maintain a proactive attitude in life.
In the National Alliance Manifesto, we strive for strengthening the youth and women! As a matter of fact, this is part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations, which gives Latin America and the Caribbean the direction to go to reach a more stable and inclusive social and economic development.
With a dynamic group of young professionals in combination with more experienced people, we are steady and ready to serve the people of Sint Maarten with the Good Governance principles on our side.
Lucrecia Morales
Candidate #15 on the National Alliance slate
