Dear Editor,
The majority of people feel that Johnson must complete his full term in office. The performance of the St. Maarten opposition has still not yet improved. Both NA and US Party members love to go after parliamentarians and ministers; so many times we ask ourselves what kind of opposition are they?
It is time NA and US Party be wise and please look out for the needs of the people, such as talk about the recovery of the Island, talk about poverty, talk about increasing the minimum wage, talk about the high house rent on the Island, talk about buses to run Middle Region and the rest of the east side of the Island, talk about the locals being able to have their own businesses, talk about a ballpark and community centre in every district, talk about the need for more roads and public toilets, talk about the needs of the pensioners in St. Maarten.
All over the world you can hear the opposition very constructively seeking to meet the needs of the people. NA and US need to be wiser and more creative. All they can do is go after Theo, parliamentarians and ministers, and not coming forward with the needs of the people.
NA and US, it’s a shame about the minimum wage, high house rent, high cost of living, help buses to run Middle Region this year, traffic problems on the Island, more roads needed, lack of public toilets, the needs of the people and pensioners’ recovery. These are the areas you all as opposition need to talk about and leave the minister alone.
This is our first stable government since after 10-10-10.
Cuthbert Bannis
Dear Editor,
On several occasions I have mentioned that St. Maarten is not growing. This is usually in connection with the increasing intensity of the traffic. Lo and behold, what I have written in a few sentences in the past now appears in two articles from two different people.
Dear Editor,
So, I leave Simpson Bay at the Burger King restaurant at 5:00pm yesterday and stop dead in traffic. I wait the usual 15 minutes for things to move a bit and nothing. Not a wheel turns. “Hmmm,” I muse, “must be an accident on the hill,” so I turn around and head towards the bridge.
I get to the bridge and note traffic stopped dead in the road all the way to the airport. “Gee, must be a really bad accident,” I think to myself.
The bridge is stopped dead as well, but moves. So, 30 minutes later I get by Ace and traffic is still slow, but moving, and another 15 minutes later I am at the bottom of the hill and lo and behold, there is no accident at all – it is two traffic cops screwing up traffic so badly it’s almost hard to believe. They have two lanes of filter traffic stopped dead while one lane muddles around the corner and heads up the hill.
So understand this: the European cops who invented roundabouts so that multiple lanes could filter simultaneously, which works just fine every night, now suddenly decide to become human chicanes and make sure that every single person on the island has absolutely no chance at all of getting home at any reasonable hour.
News flash to the Traffic Department: you got rid of the traffic lights and put in the roundabouts for a very good reason. If you don’t remember what that was, let me remind you: it’s because they make traffic flow better.
You did the same thing when you stuck a guy at the Harley Davidson intersection in the mornings and backed traffic up to Marigot every day. Please send your traffic cops back to their desks and let the traffic take care of itself. It does a hell of a lot better without your help.
An hour and 15 minutes to get home in Great Bay from Simpson Bay. In a word: “Unacceptable!”
Steven Johnson
Dear Editor,
A couple of weeks ago I saw an article in the newspaper which caught my attention because it's the same situation I'm dealing with in regard to the government of St. Maarten.
As a young entrepreneur, my first goal was to gather young men just like me to work and give back to the community. After the devastation of Hurricane Irma that goal went into full effect.
Eager to give back, we started working for the government of Sint Maarten during the Irma clean-up, like many others. The end date was set for April 2018. Sadly, the last months of the clean-up program we did not receive payment since February 2018.
We continued the clean-up despite not being paid because we had an agreement which we wanted to fulfil. We were told at the end we will receive the payment in full. Fast-forward 6 months later after many phone calls and visits we are still waiting for payment.
Hoping that the government of St. Maarten would keep in mind that for some young men it’s hard to find jobs. Therefore, doing outdoor activities and constantly moving is ideal for some, but when you can't pay them for their hard work it has negative consequences.
As a result of not being able to pay the young men for their work, sadly, one of them was arrested for robbery as a result of finding a way just to get by. Not because they are young men means they have their parents to fall back on. Some of them are who their parents depend on. I, however, believe if payment was made to him accordingly he might not have chosen that path.
The government of St. Maarten needs to be aware of the negative effect neglecting young men in our community can lead to and in order to better the community of St. Maarten, they must first better themselves.
A young entrepreneur
Name withheld at author's request.
Dear Editor,
Building back better was and still is the buzz word 13 months after the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma to the country, classified as an extremely powerful and catastrophic Cape Verde hurricane, the strongest observed in the Atlantic in terms of maximum sustained winds, and the strongest storm on record to exist in the open Atlantic region, and the second-costliest Caribbean hurricane on record, after Maria.
