Unbiased look at the Sint Maarten Elections
Government’s personnel cost has increased more than foreseen, Finance Minister Martin Hassink told Parliament on Tuesday, and is fast becoming “unaffordable.†He gave no clear indication as to why, but a perceived lack of efficiency in certain cases resulting from sheer incompetence may well have something to do with it.
For example, in the US persons have to take a special exam to enter the civil service, where the rank and pay for those who pass it are determined at least in part by the result. Apparently no such “admittance test†is applied locally.
Sure, the level of education is taken into consideration and often set as requirement for the function, but that’s not always a guarantee. Possessing an impressive diploma doesn’t mean one necessarily is competent to do a particular job. The saying “handsome is as handsome does†comes to mind.
Of course, a balanced budget doesn’t regard just expenditures, but also income. Figures from the Receiver’s Office in today’s paper confirm that the treasury missed out on at least 1.3 million guilders in road tax last year after then finance minister Roland Tuitt decided it was not necessary to order new number plates or even replacement stickers as proof of payment, because motorists would comply anyway.
He was proven dead wrong. Police no longer could conduct targeted traffic controls to catch defaulters and in the end only NAf. 7.2 million was collected for 2013, compared to 8.5 million the year before and NAf. 8.8 million up to now in 2014.
A similar scenario occurred earlier with the botched levying of back taxes on perceived rental income for non-resident vacation homeowners championed by Tuitt’s predecessor Hiro Shigemoto. Had such an effort been prepared and executed properly – going forward instead of retroactively – in cooperation with the parties involved, including condo associations, real estate agents and resort developers, based on fact rather than fiction, there’s no telling what kind of extra earnings this might have provided.
The picture that emerges is one of a largely ineffective public sector that is more expensive than its productivity justifies. Unfortunately, it’s as much about quality as quantity.
