Dear Editor,
Not so long ago a young lady wanted to know what we used to do when girls complained that they were physically abused by men.
I explained to her what the usual procedures are. I also took advantage of the opportunity to pass on to her what my mother made all 11 of her boys to understand as the years went by. And often repeated it for the older ones also.
“First of all, you are all handsome young men and I expect you to be attractive to girls. This is healthy, but I forbid every one of you to treat any woman like you would not want any man to treat me or your sisters. If any one of you boys has a steady girlfriend, make sure you bring her home and we are going to make sure her parents know about it.”
One time one of my brothers said to my mother: “You always reminding us how to treat women, but what should we do if any boy treats our sisters incorrectly?” My mother paused and then told us to figure it out among ourselves and let her know. The consensus was that our sisters were females and should be treated correctly like any other woman should, but if any man laid a hand on any one of them, we would avenge that. My mother smiled and told us that we should be aware that every deed has consequences.
My mother used to tell my sisters, “I will not tell any one of you that I am your friend, because friends are not forever. I will never relinquish my position of mother. Yes, I will always be your mother and will always feel it when there is something not well with anyone of you. So always feel free to talk to me about it. That is why I was the first one to hold you to my bosom.”
When I reflect on those words, I ask myself what happened to that model of parenting? And then I think of those who completely disregard Proverbs 13:24 and Proverbs 22:6 and are making it difficult for parents to correct their children. So why should we be surprised when we read that the average age of the people in jail is 27 years?
Violence is bad enough, domestic violence is worse.
Now this: At one time my father told a politician who was campaigning, “When are you going to tell the people what is attainable and not what they want to hear?” When I read that, what I accept to be junk, that Member of Parliament Brison suggested, I thought back on what my father said at that time.
A phrase that I use on occasion: “Any self-respecting person would not do so and so.” Actually, what made me look up that article in the paper is because while waiting to pay a bill a person who was standing in front of me while reading the paper said out loud “When is Brison going to stop trying to fool the people?”
In what sense can we compare Fort Lauderdale to St. Maarten? Must everything our politicians suggest be about money? Is MP Brison trying to say that it has reached so far that regular security by the businesses is not enough. What MP Brison has to do instead of trying in a tactical way to relegate them is not try to get back at the police because he messed up. It would be profitable for him to try and see if he could get on their side by getting the government to do that which is right for the police in every sense.
Did MP Brison ever take time to reflect that the Justice Department regards the whole of our country? Every Ministry needs cooperation from the Justice Department. We are a country of laws. Every member of government should be aware that we all need the jail, we all need the Customs, we all need the Immigration and we all need the police. Does MP Brison know if there are enough police personnel to properly police the country?
First it was one MP encouraging the people to gamble and buy numbers to make a living, now it is another member ready to relegate our police, in order to help them to make ends meet.
Are we really encouraging mediocrity? No wonder it is constantly repeated that people in government often say that our people are overqualified.
Russell A. Simmons
Dear Editor,
My name is Alex Richardson, and I took a look at the Tax Tables 2020 that’s currently used during payroll and I wonder why many pensioners really not looking to work seeing they have the time and could use some extra income. My review of the tax table was very alarming as the tax per centages are very high and the tax tables are full of mistakes. I didn’t review all the sheet for it took a very long time as I took a look at 2017 and 2018 as well.
The taxes within recap sheet show that the percentages are too high and the pensioners working at retired taxes apply need to set a maximum.
I hereby submit some examples to highlight the actual effects of the taxes that the people are facing.
- Example shows pension collected will have to be added into the 10.414.18 per month and will cause a tax due for the sum NAf. 16.771 that’s to be paid from my pension 23.007 (72.9 per cent). I did look at the little deductions that are possible but the general sense of the tax tables. Of course this is an extreme example.
- Work 21.600 taxes 12.5 per cent = 6.828.91-29.7 per cent
- Work 1.800 monthly taxes 51.17-2.8 per cent
- Work 900 Quincena 32.72-3.6 per cent
- Real life 1.800 guilders monthly with my pension taxable 26.25 per cent
- That means the monthly 1.800 cost 2.8 per cent but at the end of the filling 11.709.14 meaning the government needs to set a cap on the pensioners and the tax tables are no good. What is 2.8 per cent due on an income of 1.800 monthly plus the recap percentages don’t reflect the tables and the percentages too high.
Recommendations are as follows:
- Used only percentages
- Set a cap 12 per cent maximum on the overall income of pensioners so they are able to work again.
Hope to have informed you truthfully as it is.
Yours truly,
Mr. Alex Richardson
Dear Editor,
In my early days growing up on Aruba in the Village, when the postman came to deliver mail and among the envelopes there was a yellow one, there was sudden anxiety. Those yellow envelopes were telegrams and telegraphs and were almost always sent in connection with death overseas. I can imagine that a great deal of your readers would be asking themselves “What is he talking about?” because technology has rendered almost all these things obsolete or given them another name. Texting and email have taken over, not to mention video calls.
Sadly to have to mention though, that because negative news spreads faster and goes a longer way than good news, it seems as if there is more bad news than good news. So, at the same time and for the same reason, secrets are also exposed quicker and also spread faster. When I opened my WhatsApp this morning to check out my greetings, there was a text from Curaçao which was not so nice. and in which three prominent citizens of this part of the kingdom, including St. Maarten, were mentioned in connection with not so admirable behavior.
What I was taught and the way I have experienced life, I am convinced that no one is above God. We are taught to turn the other cheek and to forgive because of Romans 12:17-19 and Deuteronomy 32:35. I have seen this play out in life. For years now I have been trying to highlight that the Netherland Antilles are too small. Everybody knows everybody and at one time sooner or later, “what goes around comes around” is going to come in play. It will happen here quicker than larger nations.
We tend to always ignore what the old people used to say. Anyone who is into doing mysterious things should not ignore sayings like “the longest rope has an end” and the Dutch one “Al is de leugen o zo snel, de waarheid achterhaalt hem wel”. Again it is about the money. My father used to tell me, money is not a cure. Money can get you a lot of things but it cannot cure things. I used to be an altar boy, and in so doing attended many funerals in the church over the years. The majority were open caskets and I cannot remember ever seeing money in a casket yet.
There is a joke that a very rich man requested in his will for his wife to bury him with all his money. She did. She wrote out a check for a very large amount (eight billion) in his name and put it in his suit pocket in the casket. The text that I received mentioned the millions of guilders that these three persons accumulated over the years, but it also hinted that these persons operated like a green snake in green grass. No Genesis 3:19?
One of the things that shaped me and that I will never forget is, before I started to sell the newspapers and I asked my father for some small change, he would always look for some chore for me to do and give my mother the money to give to me. Genesis.3:19. You have to work for what you want. And I have never regretted that.
Work does not kill anyone, he would say. People kill each other, people die in motor-vehicle accidents, people die from illness, people die from drowning, but work does not kill anyone, and every one’s job is as valuable as the other’s.
Sharing is mentioned in many different ways in the bible. Luke 6:38 is one of them. I believe that sharing and love go hand in hand. My question in this whole matter is: What plays around in one’s mind who behaves in this manner?
My father used to say, “The only time I see myself is when I look in the mirror. And because I know that we are all equal, I have to look for the positive in people and hope it reflects in me.” It took me a while to understand what he meant. Over the years it made a lot of sense and trust is one of the things one develops when looking for the positive in others.
Would it not be great if people would use their talent for doing the right thing?
Russell A. Simmons
Dear Editor,
On December 9 the funeral of my very good friend ChingMing took place and I was there as his only local – and very good – friend. This is because since the last more than 10 years he has been living and working here in St. Maarten – such has been in an island-country and with local people with which and whom he barely had any social cultural connection.
Up to this day such a requirement is not a factor that plays a role in the granting of a residence permit to live and work on our Dutch Caribbean islands nor in our mother country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is true that a little more knowledge is required when requesting the Dutch nationality but also is known that a little bit intelligent person can pass the related exam by just following a course of a couple of months.
Receiving – especially a permanent residence paper – to live on any of our islands should be considered of such an importance that every recipient of it should be filled with pride for the benefits it brings along. ChingMing’s departure would then have also been much more socially – and personally – fulfilled.
In my opinion it would be – for the petitioner of a residence paper as well as for our immigration department – more fruitful and beneficial to provide more attention to mentioned social cultural requirement.
Elco Rosario
Dear Editor,
I am deeply concerned about the shortage of qualified psychiatrists on the island.
The COVID-19 has resulted in devastating consequences to our country and our economy that was still recovering from Hurricane Irma. Although this has a major negative effect on the socio-economic wellbeing of the people of Sint Maarten, it also has an enormous negative impact on psychological and emotional wellbeing of the people as well.
Studies have shown that the pandemic led to a substantial increase in different mental health problems, psychiatric disorders and suicides which St. Maarten has been plagued with before and even more so since the pandemic. The lack of sufficient professional expertise is of concern as St. Maarten has also been struggling to get enough psychiatrists and other mental health care workers even before the pandemic started.
The pandemic has shed light now more than ever, how important mental health is and has also magnified our shortages as a country when it comes to mental health care. We cannot continue to do our fellow brothers and sisters of this country a disservice when it comes to their mental health.
As a Member of Parliament, I have been paying keen attention behind the scenes to a particular situation that I consider disheartening. I have had numerous meetings with the Minister of Health with regard to this situation and at one point, I thought that a resolve had been met, only to find out that initially Mental Health Foundation was not willing to come to a resolve with the 2 psychiatrists concerned .
A little background information: in 2019, two BIG-registered psychiatrists came to settle in St. Maarten with a mission to help the people of St. Maarten with mental health problems and improve the quality of psychiatric care and the mental health care in general. They started working for the Mental Health Foundation but resigned due to internal matters at MHF. However, these two psychiatrists didn’t want to give up on their mission and saw the potential for improvement of individual and public psychiatric care on the island; therefore, they made the decision to open their own psychiatric institution.
In the beginning of 2021, they submitted an application to the Minister of Public Health and filed for an institutional license and ministerial decrees were needed in order for them to continue to work as psychiatrists. At that time suicides and incidents with mentally challenged people were already rising quickly and the media frequently reported about it. Unfortunately their application was denied.
Prior to their application, their ministerial decrees were revoked because they were hired by Mental Health Foundation and were therefore only allowed to practice under the Mental Health Foundation. Different health care institutions, health care associations and patients wrote support letters for the two psychiatrists to the Minister to no avail. As a result, the psychiatrists started legal procedures against the Government of St. Maarten, in particular the Minister of Health, in which the main procedure is still pending.
They felt it necessary because they didn´t get an opportunity to explain their side of the story in addition to several false assumptions and accusations made. An example, of a false assumption was that the two psychiatrists would only treat clients who would yield the highest profits. In my opinion, if this was truly a concern then clauses could be put in the ministerial decree or policies would be an easy solution if this would be the case.
I must note as a representative of the people, I must remain very active as a citizen in my dear St. Maarten land and I can vouch for these 2 psychiatrist as being primarily about the care for the people of St. Maarten because I have had visits, many calls and inbox messages from individuals thanking me for standing up on the floor of parliament to get some kind of recuse for these 2 physiatrists because of the good work they had done for their clients and were still doing without compensation,
I am a firm believer in processes and procedures and following the laws and policies of the land. However, when the parties involved in the advisory role to the Minister represent a conflict of interest in which they are unable to deliver unbiased opinions and advice, I must question the process and the decisions taken as a result of their advice.
With our current situation on the island and the evident lack of qualified psychiatrists – can we really continue with the current status quo with an overburdened Mental Health Foundation which lacks enough psychiatrists to truly deliver quality care for all? It also leads me to question if such a decision is really and truly in the best interest of the people of St. Maarten? Is Mental Health considered a monopoly on the island? Is it truly MHF way or no way at all?
I am prepared to take this matter further and bring it to the floor of Parliament because clearly our current system is not properly functioning, while lives have been lost and many more lives are at stake. Our people deserve proper psychiatric care on the island, and we cannot play politics nor favoritism where this is concerned. As a representative of the people of Sint Maarten, I will do my due diligence with all matters of this country and continue to speak up in the best interest of the people.
I am making another plea to the Minister of Health to take a stand in the benefit of all people of St. Maarten. These psychiatrists deserve a chance to continue to work in the best interest of the people in St. Maarten because every citizen is affected in one way or the other by mental health situations on this island.
Do not allow mental health to continue to suffer at the hands of those who do not have the best interest of the people at heart.
Member of Parliament Angelique Romou
