Philipsburg: ----- A survey conducted by this media house shows that St. Maarten is already suffering from the global economic crisis. Several businesses say they already see a 15% decline in sales and believe that the island government is not doing enough to brace the business community.General Manager of Le Grand Marche Prakash Sujanani said they have analyzed the problem which is facing the world since prices went up in several areas. He said while they are waiting to see what American President Barrack Obama would do to change the trend he acknowledged this would take time since the new president has to fully analyze the problem. He said this analysis would take as much as a year.
Coming back to St. Maarten he said is going through a major problem because several people that are working on St. Maarten are not from St. Maarten. While he agrees that the police namely the immigration department have a job to do by picking up illegal immigrants he feels that the police have to do their jobs correctly.
Sujanani said one of the main hindrances on St. Maarten is the lack of manpower in the police affairs department to process working permits. He said one of the main hindrances in getting working permits for their employees is the amount of time this process takes. He said this situation creates a sense of insecurity since people maybe able to wait one month for their documents but during that time they still have to eat and live.
The businessman said since there is a shortage of staff even at the police station he feels the Lt. Governor and chief of police Franklyn Richards is left with the burden of making sure law and order is maintained. Sujanani said the people that are mostly affected are those that applied for their working documents and are not getting it on time. The store manager said one of the things that are going un-noticed is that there is an influx of people coming in to the island as tourist and are beginning to seek employment so that they can eat and feed their families back home due to the world wide recession. While the businessman said the employers that are hiring these illegal immigrants are to be blamed one has to understand that the employers cannot find locals to fill the positions that are available. "A business cannot function with managers only we need all calibers of people to run any business efficiently is needed". Sujanani said.
He said because of how time consuming this process has been the company he manages had to choose an outside agent to process the working documents for their employees. Sujanani said Le Grand Marche has to pay that agent a fee for the processing of the documents outside of the government processing fees plus they have to pay the agent a fee of Naf100 per month for each employee as long as the documents are valid. The monthly monies he said is not fixed since this depend on the salaries the employee is making. Sujanani said the reason his company had to deal with an outside agency and not the labor department is because of the amount of time papers take and by the time it is ready it already expired.
Sujanani said while he understands the intention of the island government who wants to have locals in the job market he is not sure the locals are prepared to do the jobs that is available. Such jobs he said includes shelf packing, gardening and construction.
Sujanani said his company is now studying the new labor policy which he considers too stringent. He said some of the documents and the amenities that are required in the new policy are ridiculous since the employees are already living on St. Maarten.
He said if government insists on this new policy then he is sure they are driving business people away. He said while they understand what government wants to do by trying to get locals in the job market this is something very hard to come by. Sujanani said the parts of the three year policy are ridiculous. He said the idea behind this policy is government wants to control its citizenship rights.
"They simply don't want anymore people with permanent residency or passports" the businessman said. Sujanani said he believes that those persons who were part of the tripartite committee acted blindly when they drafted this policy. Sujanani said he believes that the policy should not be for persons already living on the island but instead for new comers which would take them forward instead of looking backwards.
He said he does not know what to tell the employees who have been working for the past three years since they also invested into the island. He said if this policy is to take full effect then he as a manager would have to keep on working. "I would never be able to relax because I have to keep on training people who might not even stay with my company after they are trained" Sujanani explained that he is yet to see what can kind of manpower the island has locally. He said there is no database that the private sector can get into to see if they can find qualified workers. "I have told the government they need to have this in place if they want locals on the job."
He said while the island has grown tremendously over the past years the necessary infrastructure is not in place to accommodate the growth. He said what the island government is trying to do now they should have done it ten years ago. He said they suggested to the island government that the processing fees be paid in parts since this would serve as a guarantee for the working documents but government has not taken this into consideration.
