With confirmed infections at Immigration, Customs, the prison, police and fire brigade, the island’s second corona wave has hit law enforcement and emergency services hard. It also shows that essential workers who can be assumed to take the necessary precautions are also at risk, especially those directly dealing with COVID-19 patients at St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) or involved in testing like Collective Preventive Services (CPS) and St. Maarten Laboratory Services (SLS).
All these “front-liners” remain the heroes of this pandemic and it is important that their efforts lead to visible results in terms of reducing the spread of the virus while improving the local public health and social situation. In terms of well-being that would be difficult if not impossible without additional liquidity loans from the Netherlands.
Despite reopening to the tourism economy’s biggest market – the US – payroll support will be a continued necessity at least during the coming months to prevent even more business closures and/or mass layoffs and give government enough cashflow to meet its commitments. However, seeing the reported outcome of last Friday’s Kingdom Council of Ministers meeting in The Hague that is now in serious doubt.
St. Maarten has not yet met the requirements for the second tranche of monetary assistance, according to the Committee for Financial Supervision CFT, while Aruba already completed the process and Curaçao is close to doing so. This means St. Maarten will not even be considered for a third tranche until it has “finished its homework.”
Then again, all three Dutch Caribbean countries have problems with new conditions for the latter, including certain aspects of the structural reform “packages” and particularly the related Caribbean Reform Entity. Hopefully, today’s press briefing will shed some light on this crucial issue even though Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs is still abroad.
To say there is much at stake would be a huge understatement.
