On December six, we wrote a letter to you, the same was delivered and acknowledged as received by your social media personnel. This letter was sent via social media, e-mail and to the local press as an open letter. Up to today we have not yet seen or received a response or reaction to the letter neither privately or publicly.
We are once again submitting the letter to your offices, your legal counsel and the Minister of Vromi Angel Meyers. Please note that the solar consumers and producers of clean power are neither the enemy nor going away because we are being ignored and victimized. On the contrary, this increases our willingness to unite, continue pursuing what we all know is best for the future of the island.
Therefore by this means I am respectfully requesting the following:
An open response to our letter dated. 12/6/15.
A request for a meeting time and date to discuss the following points:
Why has GEBE prioritized the changing of the digital metres to solar customers?
What is GEBE doing to comply with the goals set out on the country's energy policy of
2014?
What are GEBE's plans if any regarding solar production by individual clients?
Why is GEBE not willing to pay dollar for dollar for excess energy produced by its solar
clients, but is ok receiving this energy and not paying anything for it?
Can a compromise be reached on point 4 above until a final policy or tariff is put in
place?
How can we as consumers assist GEBE in embracing the solar production from the
clients that have taken this initiative?
Please note that our goal and intentions are simply the ones stated above for two main reasons:
To protect the significant investment we already made.
For the obvious benefits that clean solar energy generate for the good of the island and the environment.
I sincerely hope that this follow up letter does not fall on "death ears" like our original letter did. We are not going away and we will continue pursuing this subject until the issues are seriously and properly addressed.
Ricardo Perez
Proud residential solar client.
Dear Editor,
Please allow me some space in your newspaper to address the Honourable Minister Emil Lee.
Minister Lee, St. Martin was certainly not built in one day but by many years of hard work and sacrifices of generations before that have passed or are still alive and should now be retiring, making room for a younger generation to take over.
Unfortunately we do not know why Saint Martiners who have worked on the Dutch side are left un-provided for, so therefore some of us that are still able have to remain in the work force and are still struggling to make ends meet.
After working for 40 odd years we are left pension-less or severely cut in our pension because we depended on a social security system that let us down. It might have been an administrative oversight of the legislators in the Dutch Kingdom and/or from the Dutch Social Security System, but we feel that it is our human right to an equal treatment in the Dutch Kingdom with others who have laboured to develop the economies in the Dutch Kingdom.
We have paid our wage-tax and all our social premiums. We got our doctor card as employee working for companies on the Dutch side. Now that we want to collect our AOV our social pension we are being rejected, denied or severely cut, with the argument that we are not registered in the Civil registry and/or the Tax department of Country St. Maarten.
We feel that we who have contributed to the development of St. Maarten are being discriminated against just because we are residing on the French side.
We honestly hope that your Ministry would take up this matter and correct this injustice
in order to repair this human rights violation to our senior citizens permitting them to retire honourably and by so doing create more employment for our young people.
Thanks in advance Honourable minister for your kind intervention.
Raymond Helligar
Dear Editor,
The St. Maarten Housing Development Foundation (SMHDF) has taken note of the statements made in the media of the Civil Court proceedings concerning one of its former employees Mr. E. Kalmera. SMHDF is in agreement with respective ruling.
On the eve of 2016, a year in which we will celebrate our 20th anniversary on June 6, SMHDF is moving forward with its core task of providing housing for those most in need of shelter. With the present housing demand SMHDF, more than ever, aims to make a difference in the lives of those in dire need of housing, thereby enabling them to be become self-sufficient in their respective lives.
In 2015, SMHDF was able to fund several projects for which its financial resources are exclusively intended, thereby supporting a wide range of housing opportunities as a social enterprise and industry-focused corporation. We seek to influence and innovate ways in which to assist housing seekers more effectively within our present and future housing communities.
For 2016, we believe that the provision of housing is about more than just bricks and mortar – that as the largest housing provider, we are at our most successful when we focus on the social values. This opportunity creates the way to engage with and invest in our communities, and in so doing actively seek to identify and meet the needs of those who live in them. Our focus will remain on our humanitarian core objectives.
Herewith SMHDF wishes its former employee, Mr. E. Kalmera, lots of success with his ventures. Happy Holidays.
Dear Editor,
After much posturing, political spin and attempts at character assassinations we have a government with a minimum majority of eight. In reaching here we have played political hardball with the Governor. From the outset we refused to see the function of the Governor and the person holding the office as one and the same. Simply put, we must get it our way and it doesn’t matter who pays the price. We are doing our people a disservice when our only purpose is to spread discord and confusion.
The Governor figured too prominently is the whole debacle of dissolving Parliament and calling snap elections. If the separation of powers were applied, as they should have been, the role played by the Governor would simply be sign or don’t sign. The act of making public statements one way or the other is delving into the politics of the matter and the Governor is supposed to be apolitical or above the politics.
This plays well for our politicians for we always need someone to blame, we never accept responsibility for anything happening during our watch. Formerly, it was Curaçao and now everything seems to point to the Dutch and their creation called the CFT. We forget to let the people know that these are agreements we made and after not being able to balance a budget in five years feel the need to cast the blame around. While we are seeking creative ways to bleed our people for the 15 million needed to balance the budget, and who knows what else for the outstanding debts to APS and SZV.
We would have the people believe that the 120 million we gifted an American multinational couldn’t make a difference. Interestingly, we blamed that on the receiver. And our unemployment, of course, is blamed on the education system that according to them doesn’t produce what the economy needs while we finance most if not all of these studies and boast of spending 33 per cent of our budget on education. Maybe in the coming year we could hear what kind of returns we get on such a huge investment.
We have refused to implement counterpart in the public sector, but are adamant that the private sector has to. We are afraid to consider a quota system to guaranty employment for our people for the campaign financiers won’t take that too lightly. We have over- loaded government departments with foreigners who do as they wish with absolutely no respect for our people. We make no effort to recruit and bring back our people, who have completed their studies, to contribute to the continued development of their country; and, if some return on their own they are told they don’t have experience.
The people we elect are insensitive and contemptuous towards their own; this island can better be called strangers’ paradise. Violent crime is going through the roof, but our ideas to deal with it, like most everything else, is hold a closed door meeting for the people doesn’t need to know. Unless our people make the connection between the election and the way they live or survive the ugly situation will continue.
Not being able to put food on the table, pay school fees or for the bare necessity of running water and electricity to your home in the 21st century is unacceptable, and you need to do more than just complain. The time to walk around in your country knocking on doors begging them to open is long gone; it’s time you kick the doors in. The new government might tickle your fancy with the actions of the Finance Minister and others; however, I still believe it’s wrong to put non-belongers into government, but then that’s me. So until next year, Merry Christmas and a most Prosperous New Year.
Elton Jones
Dear Editor,
The word “decree” carries within it a certain gravitas; a solid weight of credibility, authority, and trustworthiness. It connotes something that cannot, nor should not, be undone lightly. And yet on Sint Maarten the word seems to carry the weight of a feather. A mere whisper can set it flying in another direction.
A governor within the Kingdom of the Netherlands is an agent of the sovereign Dutch Crown. And a decree from a governor is in effect a decree from that crown. But if these decrees can float away at the slightest breeze, then they don’t come from a heavy crown of golden authority, but rather a flimsy crown of feathers so lightweight that it floats wherever the political wind may take it.
And, chances are come next September the political winds will again be blowing in a different direction, and the crown of feathers will be swept along with them. What faith can we have then in such a crown?
That is no longer good governance as this kingdom defines it, but the arbitrary whim of unaccountable power. Men have encountered this before in history, and called it tyranny.
Jason Lista
