‘Apologise to
the people’
~ Marlin tells Wescot-Williams ~
PHILIPSBURG--National Alliance leader and Island Councilman William Marlin believes Commissioner Sarah Wescot-Williams owes the people of St. Maarten an apology. “I was shocked, to say the least, hearing the Commissioner during Wednesday’s Executive Council press briefing,” Marlin said.
Based on a question concerning the water woes on the island, Wescot-Williams said, among other things, that while she was visiting a primary school in Hope Estate last week a young man had asked her why the water in Defiance was off every day and she answered, “I have the same experience in Cole Bay.”
The Commissioner acknowledged that the entire community was entitled to an explanation. But Marlin said her statements had been very insensitive.
“The Commissioner cannot just shrug the shoulders and say to the child, ‘Don’t ask me because I don’t know either.’ It’s government’s responsibility to know. I believe she owes the young man and the people of St. Maarten an apology,” he said.
To Marlin, the Commissioner’s answer to the young man proves that government has no sense of direction. “The problem with shortage of water is not a one-time thing like the tremor we felt yesterday where, if asked five minutes after, you couldn’t give an explanation what caused it.”
He pointed out that a Commissioner of the same Democratic Party was chairman of the GEBE board and queried why that Commissioner could not inform his colleagues just across the corridor on the situation with water shortage.
Marlin said the island has been plagued with water shortages for months and a responsible government had to be knowledgeable in what it was doing.
Regarding the decision to buy water from French St. Martin, Marlin said that it never should have taken a crisis decision to decide to buy water. “People have a right to know what is being done to solve the water problems. It cannot be that days before the tourism high season, when tourists flood the shores of the island, that the Executive Council still doesn’t know what is going on,” he said.
