Dear Editor,
According to Ms. Hanson; “It make you feel as if you a beggar…” - as she shared her experience with the Ombudsman and her team, seen in their illuminating short film ‘Home Repair’: A Revelation of a Social Crisis.’ She, like many other St. Maarteners, currently living in the direst of situations, deserve so much more than our collective pity and empathy. They deserve compassion; action!
Everyone who calls St. Maarten ‘home’ deserves to live in a country where gainful employment is afforded to all, in addition to equitable access to quality healthcare and education. Yet, we find ourselves existing on the brink of national self-destruction.
Hurricane Irma simply exacerbated what was already a crisis; massive vulnerability, the decline of the middle class, and a failing bureaucracy. How easy is it now, for families to move in and out of poverty as compared to 20 years ago? We live on the front lines of climate change, enduring natural hazards that continue to risk our livelihoods, but how often do we see policy solutions to these problems?
Innovative economic and social policy will create a sustainable development trajectory necessary to tackle vulnerability and poverty. Caribbean Development Bank provides a multidimensional vulnerability index for small states. We need to ensure that resilience is worked into the fabric of our society, especially over the long term. We need to recognize where we are weak and create strategies to tackle those weaknesses…pronto!
And yes, we do need to establish a poverty line. We need to reduce the overall cost of living, and create policies that focus on our people’s assets and capacities. Forget looking at what we do not have, and start looking at what we do! Let’s build programs that empower rather than promote dependency.
You see, I believe the young, single mom of two in Cul de Sac, who works two jobs to keep the lights on, but is really good at styling hair and has 1,000 followers on Instagram, would be better served through a free program that assists her in setting up her own home-based hair salon than a few hundred guilders of social assistance. This is focused development of our gig economy, which may hold the key to promoting greater levels of entrepreneurship; pride, flexibility and financial success. Don’t we all want these things?
And at the end of the day, as terrible as things may seem in our political environment, there are many of us walking around who possess the commitment, expertise, competence and love for St. Maarten necessary to get us back on the right track. It is up to you, however, to recognize who those persons are and afford them the opportunity to change the game.
Ludmila Duncan
