SXMElections.com

PHILIPSBURG--Democratic Party ((DP)) leader Member of Parliament Sarah Wescot-Williams has raised concerns about Tourism and Economic Affairs Minister Claret Connor’s apparent plans to disband the existing foundation governing the St. Maarten Tourism Authority (STA) and to establish the STA without the intermediary foundation.

“Are we to assume that the minister will formally dissolve the foundation?” she asked in a press statement on Monday. “Something is not right again,” she said, as is evident by the latest face-off between Government and the STA board.

The STA has been an “ongoing concern” for (DP), because no tourism plan is in place. The lack of such a plan always has been said to be due to the incomplete progress to come to an STA. “This process has been ongoing for at least 10 years, some even say 15 years,” Wescot-Williams said.

“Agree with the current proposed organisation or not, it did bring the establishment of this badly needed ‘authority’ a step closer to realisation,” she said.

She recalled that she had sent questions about the STA to Connor in early January after his “tongue slipped” and he “divulged” his intention to (re)evaluate the STA. She received answers from the minister on June 22. “One can only but have concluded from these answers that everything is/was well on track,” she said.

Wescot-Williams is “extremely troubled” by the June 22 letter and has questioned whether it was “a sham to placate Parliament.”

Connor stated in the June 22 answers that the permanent STA would become a reality in the last quarter of 2016. Wescot-Williams wants to know what will happen in the meantime with the tourism industry. “Who is responsible for what of this all-important industry?”

The “Ready to Work for You” Governing Programme of the United People’s (UP) party-led coalition states that Government will review and study the possibility of expanding the objectives and purpose of the STA.

“They have to be referring to the foundation. Then, I must conclude that the Government truly believes that they can fool all of the people, all of the time. This is unacceptable and we must speak up, because the writing is already on the wall and we are slipping, regardless to what the numbers say,” Wescot-Williams stated.