Dear Editor,
At last, some good news on protecting vulnerable workers in the home. They care for our children, elderly, disabled and homes, but are we doing enough to take care of them?
We estimate that domestic workers typically earn less than half of average wages, and sometimes no more than about 20 per cent. Their hours are among the longest and most unpredictable, and 90 per cent do not enjoy access to social protections such as pensions and unemployment benefits.
At least 80 per cent of all domestic workers are women, which means that women are disproportionately affected by these decent work deficits. Domestic work also represents some four per cent of the female labour force. In Latin America for instance, 14 per cent of all female wage workers are domestic workers.
There is also an international dimension – recent ILO analysis indicates that 17 per cent of domestic workers are migrants.
At stake is the wellbeing of tens of millions of domestic workers and that of the families for whom they work. Recent UN estimates on population and ageing confirm that demand for domestic work is likely to grow: with ageing populations, reduction of public care policies and an increasing number of women entering the labour force worldwide, families are increasingly turning to domestic workers to care for their homes, children and ageing parents.
Though often hidden, domestic workers are a fundamental part of the care economy delivering in-home care services in both the informal and formal economy. Concerned by cost and complexity of becoming formally employed many avoid it, resulting in high levels of informal employment and undeclared work.
While these problems are not new, I am encouraged by the remarkably positive way global policy makers have stepped up to the challenge.
Five years ago today, the ILO adopted the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) and its accompanying Recommendation 201. These were the first international standards on decent work for domestic workers, aiming precisely to extend fundamental protections and rights to the 67 million domestic workers labouring in private homes around the world. That the Convention was adopted with near unanimity by the ILO member states, and signalled the global recognition that despite providing crucial services to homes and societies within the care economy, domestic workers were facing severe discrimination with respect to working conditions and human rights.
The subsequent response from countries around the world has been impressive, with law and policy reform underway globally.
In 2010, the ILO estimated that only 10 per cent of domestic workers were covered by labour legislation to the same extent as other workers. Since 2011, over 70 countries have taken action to ensure decent work for domestic workers. Of these, 22 have ratified the Convention, another 30 have achieved law and policy reform, and at least another 18 are engaged in extending protections to domestic workers. The ILO has partnered with constituents in 60 of these countries, drawing across the office’s full breadth of expertise to build their capacity across a vast spectrum of policy areas.
While these measures represent the first steps on a long path to redress a history of exclusion, they are not enough to meet the challenge of protecting domestic workers. Reports on the widespread abuse and exploitation continue to stream through the media. In many ways the statistics I cited at the outset speak for themselves.
In adopting the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN pledged that no one would be left behind. On the right to decent work for domestic workers we’ve made a good start, but the task will require sustained attention to ensure real progress. If we are serious about the achievement of the sustainable development goals of poverty reduction, equality and decent work for all, in particular for women, then addressing deficits in domestic work is essential.
For its part, the ILO will continue to work in partnership with governments, workers, employers and the international community to build on the positive workers have a right becomes the reality.
Guy Ryder,
Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO)
An OP-ED on the 5th anniversary of ILO Convention No 189,
the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011
Dear Editor,
I read your editorial in response to the reports regarding school bus services. You summed up what you consider should be taken in account, and which could possibly amount to those figures. I could not directly recover where your summation of what could jack up the prices of those bills, was mentioned. Should not all of this have been negotiated before the price per trip was determined, similar to that of a construction contract?
Those busses are not the property of government. I am content that again a question of public transportation is being brought forward.
It all comes back to what I continue to propagate. Public transportation should be in the hands of the public (government). Whatever has to be changed and regulated can be changed with a transition period to compensate whoever needs to be compensated. The schools do not change location so the infrastructure can be studied and the routes can be re-arranged and laid out to avoid those complicated trips, and possibly make the trips shorter.
Which brings me back to my suggestion to change government working hours and school hours from seven to three. In addition, I would like to suggest that random tests should be made on school bus drivers, because on several occasions, I have seen school bus drivers getting into their bus with open beer bottles in their hands, containing liquid. There is one male driver that I saw buy the beer, opened it and I saw him get into the bus. This was in the beginning of April this year.
I am aware that nobody wants anyone to touch their money, but it should be earned earnestly. Everybody must eat, because I firmly believe that any man who goes out there and works eight hours a day should not have to worry about where he is going to get a plate of food tomorrow. And just like I continue to say that I do not agree with the kind of salaries and compensation that the MP's and ministers are enjoying, I will say that everybody should have a liveable income, and not a certain part of the community, while the rest have to struggle to make ends meet.
If government continues to permit a certain set of citizens to get so much more than the rest, government should know what can be the consequences. I will not use the same words that were used about two weeks ago, but the writing is on the wall. We need more balanced wages and in a country with a population of 40 to 50 thousand on 16 square miles, it should not take accountants bureaus to be able to reckon who should get what.
A MAVO student with a simple bookkeeping should be able to administrate that after the government has adequately determined reasonable liveable salaries. The Labour Department has to do its work. Government has to stop juggling. And the same way kinks were ironed out of the school bus transportation's budget, the same way all of those other kinks could be ironed out, and we would see that way too much money is given to the wrong people.
Many of those school children, who have grown up, now say that that has always been the modus operandi of government. That is why none are condemning the next and the same people are being shuffled from one board of the government-owned companies to the other. I was told not to defend them when they get caught, because they never cared about the people, so the people should not care about them.
They are involved in public transportation, supermarkets, construction, gas companies and anything one can think about. Can we press upon them to at least start by regulating the public transportation, so that everybody could be served without being picked up, because one does not live in a more lucrative for the permit holders' area. Let them for once ignore ‘what's in it for me’ and do the right thing. Are they not being (over)paid to do so?
Let us continue to pray for them. There is a saying in Dutch which, translated into English is, "The pitcher which is thrown in the well too often, does come up broken at last" I think that so many discrepancies have been uncovered of late that it is time for the players to adhere to that saying.
Russell A. Simmons
Dear Editor,
We have been coming to St. Maarten for many years and we have always enjoyed your beautiful island. Now when we come, we are scared going to shop on Front Street, because of people blocking your way, trying for you to go in their store, grabbing you, pouncing on you to get you in the stores.
A person should feel free and secure when they go shopping. One example I can give is a store by the name of Le Pure selling cream. They force you into applying the creams and try to sell you by grabbing you off the streets.
That is not right. The people are getting scared by this type of behaviour. This is very bad for the island. Nobody wants to come to an island where they are treated in this manner.
Jeannine Levesque
Dear Editor,
So, I read Olivier Arrindell’s story in the media over the weekend and as late as Monday, June 13, 2016. In it, he announces that AVA Airways received a business economic permit. I checked and found out that what he got was Government approval to establish an NV (or BV). Contrary to WINAIR and INSEL AIR, he does not have an Economic Licence, or an Airline Operators Certificate (AOC).
Arrindell claims to have been in the airline business for almost 10 years and says he has the know-how on how to take commercial aviation in St. Maarten into a bold new direction and how to be innovative. I have a few questions: where exactly was Arrindell in the aviation business? What was Arrindell’s function(s) in the airline business? Was he part of management or just an employee? What type of aircraft did the airline he was associated with utilize? What part of the Latin American market, as it relates to destination St. Maarten/St. Martin, does he think he has more (or better) knowledge of than some of the big airlines that presently fly in and out of South America, one of which is COPA AIRLINES that services St. Maarten?
Then this: why is it that whenever Arrindell wants to say something about his hallucination airline AVA Airways, does he always seem to have the need to bash WINAIR and/or INSEL AIR (with erroneous information, I might add)? Can he not just “do his AVA thing” and leave these two airlines (which actually fly, have airplanes, employees, routes and oh, yes, Airline Operators Certificates) alone?
Arrindell is claiming to know how airlines need to expand borders not be stuck in time, and how to be innovative in order to survive. His AVA Airways, however, has yet to start up let alone survive! When will we be able to see, touch and feel AVA’s first A320 jetliner (NEO or not)? And, can Arrindell tell us exactly what he means with AVA’s proposed operations on “an East–West hub”? Is AVA planning to fly East out of St. Maarten to the only destinations in that direction, which after Antigua & Barbuda are countries like Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and other countries on the African continent; and, West out of St. Maarten to Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, the Cayman Islands, Mexico and other Central American countries?
Since he seems not to be interested in the traditional North American market, is it his intention to fill his Airbuses with tourists from these destinations to the East and West of St. Maarten? Or, maybe offer the St. Maarten tourist great airfares to the abovementioned destinations?
Being a local businessman myself, I fully support the establishment of other local businesses, but I am very wary of smoke and mirrors. While I do not pretend to know much, I know enough about the airline business to confirm that to operate any Airbus aircraft, jet fuel is needed. Hot air is only useful when one operates balloons.
Michael J. Ferrier
Dear Editor,
Before and after 10-10-10, there have been a number of investigations on the island that seemed unending, and we are very quick and eager to say “let justice take its course” or something to the order of let them have their day in court. While we have lived to believe and adhere to these sayings and clichés, we have also consistently allowed our people, among them leaders in this society, to be mistreated and abused by a Dutch judiciary with no other goal that to put these uppity small island people in their rightful place.
It is not the intention to determine right and wrong or influence the innocence or guilt of any individual case. Let’s look at the Buncamper saga, speculating with government land has suddenly become a crime, this mind you while everyone in government has done the same over the years for self-enrichment or that of their immediate family. But, while that in itself exposes the whole process as selective justice, we welcome our day in court. However, something is wrong when the Prosecutor’s Office can hold citizens in this country hostage for between one and 10 years, and only bring the case forward when one dares postulate oneself or receives an offer or appointment to a lucrative position. In this very case it was the accused that got the case moving because they realized they had no life, social or otherwise, while they existed in virtual limbo and at whims of the Prosecutor’s Office.
Recently, we had the case of the St. Maarten tourist office involving Miss Labega, Mr. Badejo and Miss Fortuno, this case has been ongoing for some eight to 10 years. The office of the Prosecutor, however, would have us believe that there is reason to suspect collaboration and collusion, so after a decade we can’t ask people in this society to come in for questioning, but we behave like the “Gestapo” and rouse them in the pre-dawn hours, hold and parade them around not in search of justice, but to put the fear of hell into the rest of the population. For as thinking goes in my country, if they can hold the leaders without resistance what can I do or expect.
This case is real interesting for a few reasons; in the first case the civil servant who made the complaint was not authorize to do so and was subsequently removed by the minister. Secondly, the tourist bureau or the island government has claimed a loss of funds at the institution; and finally, for someone to be able to embezzle money these funds must be entrusted to their care. So it boggles the mind that after so many years have elapsed this case proceeds with no concern for the lives of those who were dragged through the mud by a system that thrives on periodic media leaks.
As is the case more time than not, we are told any semblance of overreach is just coincidental like was the case when they arrested Mr. Master just before the budget debate, for they were not aware of the debate on the most important policy document of the “country.” In the tourist bureau case, the two ladies were to sign consultancy contracts that same day, but of course, the prosecution can’t be expected to know that even though they bug peoples’ phones with or without authorization or cause.
Our people, like our leaders (politicians), are suffering from a serious case of disconnect, we can’t or refuse to recognize abuse and injustice until it knocks at our door; we, meaning too the often-used saying of “crab syndrome,” where we revel in the demise or misfortunes of others for no other reason than envy. In military terms it’s referred to as pathological disassociation and its cause is post-traumatic stress disorder. What causes it in people occupying a 37-square-mile rock is anybody’s guess? What we know is that it is unacceptable to destroy people’s lives under the guise of being understaffed, when the same people claim not to have filed their taxes because they didn’t have the help or time they are prosecuted for tax evasion.
It is not the intention here to preach anarchy. While this system is not the best, until we come up with something better we must obey and abide by the law. As is the case worldwide, don’t be afraid to say “Justice delayed, is Justice denied.” When your neighbour’s house catches fire wet yours.
Elton Jones
