Philipsburg:--- The executive council it is understood has offered a package to head of Public Works Joseph Dollison. The offer is for Dollison to vacate his position as head of the department. Dollison who is presently on vacation SMN News understands made several phone calls to the office of the Commissioner of Public Works on Friday. It is not clear, if Dollison would accept the offer or if he plans to contest it. Sources say the executive council basically asked Dollison to step aside now or to face legal embarrassments when the final reports are submitted.
This comes on the heels of the investigation presently taking place by SOAB. Some two months ago the SOAB delivered a preliminary report to the island’s Lt. Governor and executive council advising them to hire an interim manager due to the fact that both Dollison and his subordinate has no control over the day to day management of the department. Also on its way is a technical report, which would define some of the wrong doings of Dollison.
Even though the final report on the three-month investigation is not yet finalized, the SOAB along with assistance from the department of ROB (Curacao) visited several buildings on the island earlier this week. SMN News understands that most of the buildings that were visited by the investigating team acquired building permits that were signed by either Dollison or his subordinate Claudius Buncamper.
The inspectors and investigating team visited a building owned by the head of ROB Joseph Dollison, that building is located on LB Scot Road. Sources close to the team said they were busy measuring the doors, windows, and toilet spaces to see if the building is in compliance to the building codes of the Netherlands Antilles. It is said the inspectors even checked the thickness of the concrete and the parking spaces for the three-story building.
In the preliminary report submitted to government some two months ago the SOAB said there is no clear mandate given by the executive council to the director of ROB. Secondly the SOAB determined that based on the analysis between the residential and commercial projects the director of ROB categorized some million guilders project as residential so that he could sign off on the building permits instead of the executive council. The director of ROB had the mandate to sign off on projects, which are to the value of NAf.500, 000, or less but during the investigation, the inspectors found Dollison as well as his subordinate signed off on projects, which valued more than a Naf. 1,000,000.
According to the report, the investigators found that instead of these top civil servants uphold the law they were busy assisting the developers by finding loopholes in the law.
The inspectors found several buildings that are not up to par and in accordance of their building permits, and it was clear that the inspectors of ROB (St. Maarten) did not perform their duty since they did not conduct measurements.
The investigators are yet to find the guidelines or definitions that are to be used by the department internally. They also found that the director would remove certain requests from the normal procedures.