Dear Editor,
The St. Maarten Housing Development Foundation (SMHDF) encourages public debate and comment about social housing and affordable housing on St. Maarten, especially after two sessions of Parliament when our foundation went to pains to open itself to government and the people of St. Maarten for scrutiny. In the process the SMHDF responded to more than 110 questions with an additional session to clarify some of the answers provided to the questions from various members of Parliament regarding the work of our Foundation and related matters. It is therefore most surprising and rather unfortunate to read quite some misrepresentations and lack of understanding of the information provided by an opinion writer, Mr. Joseph Harvey in The Daily Herald edition of Thursday, February 25, 2020.
Had Mr. Harvey listened carefully to all that we had to say without bias and misrepresentation he would have heard that an SMHDF $45 million request to the Trust Fund is from monies set aside by the Dutch Government to provide better housing conditions for St. Maarteners first and foremost. Not only housing repairs, as Mr. Harvey has stated in his opinion piece, but also for the building of 1,000 new much-needed homes, temporary homes to enable repairs and also for various social reforms that will greatly improve the housing lot of the island.
Despite the huge number of motivating documents, financial reports, statistical information, illustrations and other written evidence to support our detailed presentation to parliament, Mr. Harvey has chosen to malign the good name of our foundation by hinting at fraudulent activity, claiming that our foundation is involved in deception and providing of misinformation and even suggests that we should be a target for the Prosecutor’s Office. The good gentleman also purports to know better than the foundation’s own team of financial professionals, how to make and present our financial statements in the shape and manner that he believes to be the most correct. We do not question the audacity of Mr. Harvey in this regard, but do question most strongly his agenda and purpose for such one-sided and incorrect statements.
Mr. Harvey seems to want to continue to perpetuate the misguided assumption that the SMHDF is a part of government, and the headline of the opinion piece “Public enterprise mismanaged!” is totally wrong. First of all, the SMHDF is a private organization carrying out the work that government is supposed to carry out and in no way can be described as a public entity. As for the mismanagement, that is the opinion of Mr. Harvey, which he is fully entitled to.
We stated it during parliament and we will state it again to Mr. Harvey and to anyone who wants to take the time to be objective and listen to the facts as presented before making unfounded judgements – the SMHDF is an open book. We provide our independently audited financial statements each year to the relevant authorities from whom Mr. Harvey can obtain all the information he wants and/or says we are not providing for his own scrutiny. And should Mr. Harvey want a personal explanation of the line items in the very statements he has scrutinized we will also be happy to put our financial team at his disposal to further explain anything he does not understand. Such is our confidence in the information we have provided publicly and such is our resolve to ensure the very transparency that Mr. Harvey claims to want.
It is our contention that the writer of this opinion piece will not take us up on our offer to provide him with the insight he is requesting since his sole aim is to intimidate or cast doubt on the important work the foundation continues to do in the interest of social housing and affordable housing on St. Maarten.
The SMHDF has previously sat back and allowed individuals such as the opinion writer to misstate the truth without response, believing that our work will speak for itself. Clearly this has not worked and calls for like response whenever the record needs to be set straight, as is clearly the case here.
Thank you
Helen G. Salomons – General Director SMHDF
Telston A. Bell – Director SMHDF
