Philipsburg:--- The head of the census office on St. Maarten Leona Marlin is furious at the statements made against the census office as it relates to the issuance and controls over passports on the island. Marlin who has been at the helm of the department since 2005 said ever since she took office there has been no incidence of fraud at her department and she wants to know based on what the Dutch has made their analysis of the department.
Marlin said ever since she took over the helm of the department they have been following all of the guidelines and rules laid down by Holland. She said in addition to that all of the audit reports have been positive. "The census office gets audited twice a year and all of our reports are positive since 2005. Marlin said passports always falls under the Lt. Governor and since there would be no more Lt. Governor the task will fall under the Governor's cabinet."
Marlin said the article which was published in one of the daily newspapers said the governor will be responsible until the office is professionalized. "She asked what do they mean by professionalized. When these people want to talk then they need to define what they are talking about." Marlin said Holland has always been talking about the census office database.
Marlin further explained that the database of the census office is not quite up to par but St. Maarten island government has been investing monies to regulate the problems. She said even though the passport belongs to the State they are not offering St. Maarten any financial assistance with the upgrading and or assistance to regulate the database. "The problem with the database began since 1997 when they did the transfer, back then not all the information in our system was transferred to the new system and up until now Holland has not returned to conduct an analysis of the system neither did they conduct any upgrades." She said whatever was done since 1997 was done at the expense of the island government. "There have been no attempts by those that own the Dutch passport to rectify any of the problems the census office is facing. While we don't have the expertise to correct these problems ourselves we have hired people to assist in correcting the problems. A specialist was brought in from Bonaire while another person was also brought in from the Netherlands to check the system."
Marlin said the BES islands have received all the assistance from the Dutch Government to optimize their database in accordance to what Holland wants. The department head said the Dutch wants to send people here to work for a specific period of time but these people are not interested in providing the necessary training to the employees of the census office who have been working hard to prevent fraud and all other types of irregularities.
Marlin said based on the information she gathered in their last meeting was that St. Maarten and Curacao would not be getting the assistance the BES islands are getting to clean up their database. Marlin said she is of the opinion that if Holland wants all the civil registries in the Antilles to be up to par then they would provide the same services and equipments to St. Maarten for that to take place.
The department head said two civil servants from the census office will be leaving to Holland next week for additional training on how to clean up databases.
