PHILIPSBURG:--- Prior planning prevents poor performance. Right now, we need to refresh our product and focus on improving our infrastructure to create a safe environment. We also need to create sidewalks, pedestrians crossings and jogging paths for the safety of the residents.
We also need to finalize link 4, cake house road making it a two-way with railings, link 3, The Ring Road, make it drivable all around to the great salt pond to ease the traffic flow in Philipsburg and start upgrading and paving Weymouth hill road which is part of Link 6 to Dutch Quarter. These are the projects we should be focussing on for the people instead of coming with a big project without doing the necessary background checks.
We need to start put our local people before big projects. Simple things make a big difference in the community for our residents such as the upgrading of Street lights on the main road in the Dawn Beach Area y NV GEBE.
The sewage connection to the homes on St. Peters Main road. The soon to be executed the project of the upgrading of the entire area from Tropicana Casino to Windward Island bank of the sidewalks, cabling and lights for the safety aspect of the entire area. Also to build proper drainage at the Atrium Hotel and the intersection of Burger King. The government also got to restore the old bridge in Simpson bay as a monument.
The government also need to look at the zoning plan for the entire Belair area.
The government likes to use the draft zoning plan on local Investors and create all kind of red tape and then open it up to other outside investors without taking the draft zoning into consideration. We got to have one zoning plan across the board.
I heard the Minister of VROMI was included in one of the meetings but not part of any other meetings or decision making for such a magnitude project in which he did a presentation about the zoning of the area. The question is why didn't other Coalition partners didn't give a presentation of this jackpot project to boost the economy. If the Minister of Finance wants to boost the economy he must sit down with 6 local business persons, 2 tax experts and 4 ordinary local persons who love St. Maarten and let them come up with a strategic plan on how to boost our local economy by lowering the profit tax, tax reform and ways to empowered our local entrepreneurs and people.
The government needs to focus more on the reducing the cost of living, labor reform, affordable housing and creating job opportunities for our people.
We need to start focussing on our people, infrastructure, and environment before we start talking anything about the China project.
MP Lake agrees with Nature Foundation that an Environmental Impact Assessment should be conducted by an Independent Party in order to determine what the environmental affect will be with this China of the Pearl project.
