Study Financing Students Almost Lost Seats on KLM Flight --- Let's Travel Secured Seats even though they were not paid.

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Philipsburg:--- Some 58 students that are scheduled to leave the island on Sunday to continue their education in the Netherlands almost lost their seats on the flight they were booked on because their tickets were not paid for. SMN News has been reliably informed by a well placed source that the new manager of Let's Travel and former employee of the Parliament of St. Maarten Terrence Rey had to fight tooth and nail to secure the students' seats even though the airline did not receive payment for the tickets. "KLM was kicking the students' names out of the system because the tickets were not paid for so Let's Travel and its team had to work all day to re-book each student as they were being kicked off the flight," the source said.

Sources within the airline said that government owes the company a huge amount of monies and only part of the bill was paid some two weeks ago by Minister of Finance Roland Tuitt while there is another huge amount that still has to be paid. "Let's Travel did all they could to assist the Department of Education to secure the students' seats when they were given assurance from government that they will be paid early Wednesday morning."

SMN News further learnt that the Minister of Education Silveria Jacobs signed off on the advice for the payment on Tuesday. The source further explained that work that was supposed to be done while the former Minister of Education Dr. Rhoda Arrindell was still in office was not done by the former head of Study Financing who is now the policy adviser to the Minister of Education. SMN News made several attempts to contact the Minister of Education for a comment but up to press time she could not be reached.