PHILIPSBURG:--- With barely a month left before the current waste management contracts expire, the Ministry of VROMI remains suspiciously silent, leaving contractors in limbo and the country on the brink of a sanitation crisis. The handling of the new garbage collection contracts, set to commence April 1, 2026, has devolved into a spectacle of incompetence, marked by flawed Terms of Reference (TOR), unanswered bids, and a desperate scramble to hide administrative failures.
On January 28, 2026, the bidding process was held, and three participants—All Waste in Place (owned by James Richardson), Garden Boyz (Angelo Gumbs), and West Indies Landscaping (Aaron Peterson)—filed complaints with the Ombudsman. They are sounding the alarm on a rigged or at least deeply flawed system. Despite a total of 17 companies bidding on the contracts, including Meadow Lands and Waste Solutions BV, not a single contractor has received official word on the outcome. Notably, the bids for the contracts amount to 6.8 million Cg annually, raising further questions about transparency and fairness in the process.
This silence is not just negligent; it is dangerous. The current contracts expire on March 31, 2026. Successful bidders need significant lead time to order heavy equipment from overseas to service the new agreement, which runs from 2026 to 2029. By withholding results until the eleventh hour, the Ministry is virtually guaranteeing that whoever wins will be set up to fail from day one.
The incompetence runs deeper than just timelines. The Terms of Reference themselves appear to be a masterclass in poor planning. Critical maintenance of garbage bins is reportedly excluded from the TOR entirely. Sources indicate the Minister of VROMI Patrice Gumbs Jr may be forced to scrap the entire bidding process and start over, an administrative disaster that would leave the island exposed. Even in a redo, we are told, maintenance will still be ignored.
While the Ministry of VROMI dithers, Philipsburg is drowning in filth. The situation has become so dire that the Minister of TEATT has reportedly had to intervene, instructing the Harbor Group of Companies to cover the cost of garbage bags and bins because the government cannot manage its own capital.
Adding insult to injury, the new bins are actually already on the island. Rather than being deployed to clean up the "deplorable" state of the capital, they sit in storage, racking up fees that the taxpayer will inevitably have to pay.
The clock is ticking toward an April 1st deadline that looks less like a start date and more like a cruel April Fool's joke on the people of St. Maarten. With no contracts awarded, no equipment ordered, and a bidding process rife with errors, the government’s mismanagement of something as basic as trash pickup has reached a new low.
