Dear Editor,
Permit me some space in your well-read newspaper. When I came to St. Maarten, a well- meaning St. Maartener offered me a job to work on his water truck. This helped me to be able to see some areas on this island that were overrun by mosquitoes. Horrified by what I saw I asked if there was a health department on the island.
After two years of back and forth, space was given me to work at the Health Department. There was steady progress made and the inspectors enjoyed occasional educational trips to upgrade themselves and thus upgrading the department. In 1979, St. Maarten was flooded from “Over the Pond” right through to “Back street”; the then “Dump” was completely covered and after a few weeks we were able to start dumping garbage again. In the meantime, the island was literally flooded with flies. That fly situation was taken care of in a matter of weeks.
Over the years, we had complaints of increase of mosquitoes, which were taken care of by the Health Department’s GKMB. Today, after so many years of having upgraded and getting qualified workers, we get warnings and scares in the media of different mosquito borne diseases etc. Mind you these diseases pass from country to country easily because of easy traveling and no specific checks into where folks are arriving from.
However, on an island as developed as St. Maarten and especially because tourism is our main trade, I would think that our “well-meaning politicians” would realize that they have to do what is necessary to keep a steady flow of currency into our economy and avoid embarrassing reports that warn people from coming to our beautiful island.
There are capable persons in the MPs’ offices that can sit down and come up with solutions. On various occasions as a retired Health Inspector, I tried to get certain equipment to curve the growth of these specific vermin in the area where I live and was treated as though I was going to sell it. By the way, if my memory serves me well I never got the opportunity to express my concern about out-sourcing mosquito control.
What Government has to do “as the people’s employees,” is have their inspectors physically visit the areas and give out warnings and/or fines. It is punishable by law to breed mosquitoes. A private business does not necessarily have to adhere to killing out all mosquitoes (bad for business). Vector control should never be given to any private company for execution. Do we still have a vector control unit? Is this progress?
Retired and enjoying it
Name withheld at author's request.
