Dear Editor,
The COVID-19 pandemic has really taken a toll on our “Sweet St. Maarten”. Decision-makers have implemented some cost-cutting measures that negatively affect the income of our people. It has contributed to a reduction of business activities, which led to reduction of working hours for employees and unfortunately, in some cases, dismissal of employees as well as closure of some businesses.
To make matters worse, the cost of living continues to go up while decision-makers drag their feet to put measures (not limited to legislations) in place to help ease the burden of the people of our country especially pertaining to acquiring our basic needs. No citizen of this country should ever have to choose one basic need over the other. For e.g., buying groceries, paying rent, buying gas, paying utility bills (including Internet) or providing for their child(ren)’s needs.
There are those that believe that by solely increasing the minimum wage, it will solve our cost-of-living issues. On the contrary, I believe based on experience it will cause cost of living to get even more expensive. When minimum wage goes up, business owners will in return raise the prices of their goods and services and most of the time even at a higher rate than the adjusted minimum wage, making the purchasing power of the population more difficult. As the cost-of-living drastically continues to go up, it has triggered a significant decrease in our middle-class population, while in turn causing an increase in our low-class population, creating more poverty.
A crucial component regarding the cost of living on St. Maarten which needs to be addressed urgently in combination with the increase of minimum wage is the establishment of a poverty line. “No Poverty” is the first item on the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030. How can we strive for this without establishing a poverty line? From 2012 to 2022, some decision-makers have even requested for the competent authority to conduct a poverty line study. Up to date this poverty line has not been established.
In addition, it was also mentioned in the ruling of the advice from the Constitutional Court (2021) that a poverty line needs to be in place. This would have given more merit to the case of the 12.5 per cent cut that affected our educators, workers of the PJIA (airport), TelEm Group of Companies, GEBE, the St. Maarten Port, and civil servants, just to name a few key sectors who were negatively affected and by extension thousands of families in our community.
As cost of fuel, food, shelter, utilities, medical care and child-care continues to go up, decision-makers need to start implementing counter measures to keep the cost of living as low as possible. Measures such as; revamping of our price control system, especially that of food suppliers and hardware stores.
Another option is to maximize going green. Even among countries that are our kingdom partners, going green has proven to be a good means to help cut the cost of utilities for consumers.
An alternative option is to establish a proper public transportation system. This would minimize the necessity of purchasing a vehicle which has an operational and maintenance cost attached.
Another option can be to empower the rental tribunal to evaluate rent prices of dwellings and business property that have a maximum market value of US $300,000 instead of NAf. 200,000 established in 2014.
There are many other solutions that can be created and applied to lower the cost of living in St. Maarten, they are a click away and they need to be properly vetted and implemented like yesterday.
Richinel Brug
