That some 13,700 people are registered for the renewed food aid programme, of whom 1,218 are above age 65 (see related story), is an indication of how deep the socioeconomic misery sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic has been and continues to be. Mind you, this is while public-sector personnel kept their jobs and hundreds of businesses in good standing with taxes and social premiums could receive payroll support to help cover their losses and stay open, while qualifying sole proprietors, individual operators and vendors as well as persons who got laid off due to the ongoing crisis were provided with the legal minimum wage.
The good news is that particularly stayover tourism did well these past two months, but the situation remains fragile. For example, since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) adjusted its travel risk advisory for Aruba upward from level 3 to 4, the island reduced its earlier prognosis from between 90,000 and 94,000 to 85,000 tourists in August.
That’s not dramatic, but does illustrate how the development of COVID-19 both locally and abroad can directly affect the income of similar destinations. St. Maarten has an added disadvantage of being in the so-called hurricane belt at the height of the 2021 tropical systems season.
All this assistance is being paid with Dutch liquidity loans and the local government has – until now – racked up 220 million Netherlands Antillean guilders in debt, according to Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs in Thursday’s paper. She also emphasised that locking down the country again due to the current spike in infections is not an option because “we are in dire straits.”
As for the 4,700 households currently in the grocery-vouchers registry and another 300 expected to be added, one can imagine them being thankful but still wishing they would not need it. Residents are generally hard workers and prefer to earn their keep rather than depend on a handout.
Achieving the latter requires controlling the virus by getting more persons from 12 years old vaccinated and maintaining the well-known protective measures, allowing a sustainable recovery of the dominant hospitality industry. It’s really the only way out.
