Grisha Heyliger-Marten
PHILIPSBURG--The Government of Canada has advised its citizens travelling to
St. Maarten to expect “nationwide power outages.” However, its colour-coded risk level still gave St. Maarten, a “green” status, which means travellers should “exercise normal security precautions.”
Commenting on the advisory, Grisha Heyliger-Marten, Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Traf-fic and Telecommunication (TEATT), noted that “green is the lowest risk level and indicates that the country is still safe for travel.”
“There is no cause to panic,” Heyliger-Marten said. “As a matter of fact, St. Maarten has the same risk level as Aruba and Curacao. This indicates that the destination is still considered safe and there are no significant threats to travellers’ safety.”
“In fact,” she continued, “The Netherlands and France are classified as ‘Yellow,’
meaning that Canadian travellers visiting those European countries should ‘exercise a high degree of caution’ particularly due to threats of terrorism in Europe’.”
The other two risk levels are: orange, which means Canadians should avoid non-essential travel to such an area and red, which means they should avoid all travel to places so designated.
“While it is true that we are facing a crisis situation with regards to our power supply, the fact is that government is doing everything it can, in close collaboration with GEBE, to restore normal elec-tricity supply,” the minister stated.
Heyliger-Marten said she believes that the Government of Canada has probably taken this into ac-count in its updated travel advisory and that is why the destination is still classified as ‘green.’ This means travellers should take the same precautions as they would at home in Canada, such as being aware of their surroundings and safeguarding personal belongings, but there are no significant safety or security concerns that warrant heightened caution or avoidance of travel to the island.
“We are monitoring how other source countries for our tourism industry are responding to the current power challenges we are facing, but as of now, there is no need for alarm,” Minister Heyliger-Marten stressed.
Photo Caption:
Grisha Heyliger-Marten, Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Traffic and Telecommunication
