Minister of Public Housing, Spatial Planning, Environment and Infrastructure VROMI Miklos Giterson recently led a delegation to Curaçao (see related story), where he met with his counterpart Minister of Traffic, Transport and Spatial Planning VVRP Zita Jesus-Leito. The work trip was organised by government accountant bureau SOAB to showcase positive developments it was involved in at VVRP’s Permits and Domain Affairs Departments in Willemstad.
The latter have embarked on comprehensive improvement projects that reportedly yielded positive results in two years. The idea is that St. Maarten can benefit from their information and guidance on best practices.
One of the main problems in both Dutch Caribbean territories regards the arrears in payments for public land given out in long-lease. Also preventing recipients from speculating with these properties by forcing them to them to meet the conditions such as building a home there as intended within a certain period is important.
The issuing of building permits is currently being streamlined and digitised by VVRP, which allows VROMI to “piggy-back” on these efforts. It’s no secret that lack of efficiency and transparency in this matter can be a major impediment to investment.
That the backlog grew locally after Hurricane Irma is completely understandable, but an expeditious approval of construction projects has become perhaps more crucial than ever before. A fast-track process was put in place for renewing roofs, while the Netherlands agreed to transfer three technical assistants to the island for four months as temporary help.
The group also visited Curaçao’s government-owned waste management company Selikor and its sanitary landfill, which is quite timely considering the ongoing crisis at the two dumps on Pond Island in Philipsburg. The result of all this obviously remains to be seen, but there is certainly nothing wrong with learning from others, in this case the country’s monetary union partner, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
Nobody has a monopoly on knowledge.
