Published: 07 April 2021
PHILIPSBURG: - “We are in the month of April and the country is still without a national budget 2021,” said Independent Member of Parliament Christopher Emmanuel on Wednesday, adding that the Minister of Finance has gone completely silent on when the budget will reach Parliament for debate.
In the meantime, Emmanuel stressed, the government is pressuring civil servants to work on reforms and other initiatives that have to be funded from the same budget. “A ship with no captain or rudder is what we have here. Nobody seems to know where we are going and nobody in this government seems to care,” MP Emmanuel said.
~ Says cuts against basic human rights ~
PHILIPSBURG: -Independent Member of Parliament Christopher Emmanuel on Sunday said that President of WICLU Claire Elshot-Aventurin confirmed what he has been saying all along; that the Prime Minister and her government lied when they said they invited the unions to discuss legislation that would see workers’ salaries and benefits cut.
Elshot-Aventurin was also quoted in the media as saying that it is not true that the unions refused to return for further negotiations which led to government being forced to deviate from the requirement that it needed an agreement for the salary cuts. “The union leader went as far as to call it a blatant lie, which I have no doubt that it is,” Emmanuel said.
Published: 15 December 2020
~ Civil servants should reject years of salary cuts ~
Independent Member of Parliament Christopher Emmanuel on Tuesday said that residents of St. Maarten should be prepared for an attack on their way of life and civil servants should not accept having their salaries cut across the board 12.5% for six or seven years to please State Secretary Knops who lives across the Atlantic and has an election to win in 2021.
MP Emmanuel minced no words in telling the public that their government is about to place a burden of suffering upon them the likes of which they have never known and make them dependent residents. He also decried the other financial cuts as unfair, unbearable, and unacceptable.