PHILIPSBURG:--- After hearing and reading the Editorial of the Daily Herald on the decisions taken by the Council of Ministers to grant workers their rightful day off on Tuesday it behooves me as a publisher to educate those that seems to have some sort of agenda.
While the Daily Herald has several journalists working for them that hails from British countries one would expect that the publisher of the deadbeat newspaper to know the system and rotation of public holidays.
Since it appears that the publisher of that newspaper whose journalists do not show up to work but most of the times steals stories and documents from SMN News then as a publisher I will do my best to inform my so called colleagues how the system works not only on St. Maarten but in most democratic countries that respects the labor rights of workers.
In the event a public holiday falls on a weekend which is already a day off for civil servants then government must give their workers the next working day off in order to compensate them for the day off they were due on the official public holiday. In this case Saturday May 30th is an official public holiday and so is Sunday May 1st (LABOR DAY). Therefore Government has no choice but to give their workers two days off which is Monday and Tuesday... This is not a favor it’s a right that all government workers have. Nowhere, did the Council of Ministers or the Prime Minister stated that the private sector cannot open or do business, however, Tuesday being an official public holiday would force employers to comply with the labor regulations and pay their workers double. To make it clear as to what the Prime Minister stated as he declared Tuesday May 3rd an official holiday the text of the press release follows: “In its meeting of Thursday, April 28, 2016, the Council of Ministers has decided that instead of Saturday April 30, the official public holiday will be moved to Tuesday May 3rd, 2016.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused especially for those who already made the necessary preparations for April 30.
Prime Minister
W.V. Marlin
Prime Minister / Minister-President
Government Administration Building
Nowhere, in the above notice did the Government or the Prime Minister moved the set dates for the Carnival Parade, so where did the Publisher of the Daily Herald got this information from and why does government have to inform SCDF since all parades will take place as scheduled by SCDF?, yes it is a known fact that the Director of SCDF worked for the Daily Herald. Misleading the people of St. Maarten with nonsensical editoral is nothing short of wreckkess reporting.
One of the many questions posed to me as a journalist/publisher on St. Maarten/St. Martin was do you believe if “Golden Boy” was in government the Daily Herald would have written such a nasty and demeaning editorial? My response was that would never happen because the same newspaper have a particular journalist that was/is working for “Golden Boy” which SMN News exposed and instead of the publisher of the Daily Herald do something to show they have some type of integrity, they sat still and never addressed the issue, because they had to do what they were told or lose their advertising.
If the Daily Herald feels that they will sell newspapers on Tuesday, then they need to pay the newspapers vendors double it’s that simple. Government did not place any restrictions on them and most of all just in case they never paid attention while stealing from SMN News we work everyday including public holidays.
