Today Newspaper St. Maarten

St. Maarten – The boys on the block in Sucker Garden are not happy. Excavators are cleaning the drains in the district, but the work that was promised to jobless neighborhood residents did not materialize. Arsenio Daal, owner of a car wash on Soualiga Road, says that MP Romain Laville did not live up to the promises he made to the people in Sucker Garden.

“There are people in Sucker Garden who have excavators. There are people who have trucks. But they are not working,” Daal says.

Daal says that public works Minister William Marlin and MP Laville offered the boys from Sucker Garden work on cleaning the drains in the district. But while there are at least six or seven jobless neighborhood residents hang out at Daal’s car wash, none of them are working.

The contract for the job went to Luciano Angelo Gumbs for 142,000 guilders. “He said in the media that he was going to hire twelve people,” Daal says. “We were initially supposed to get 4,000 guilders for supervising, but the available money is just enough for excavating. Some drains are not even part of the contract, like one on Arch road and the one next to Windward Roads. That last one has not been cleaned for twenty years and it needs to be done.”

Daal says that currently only three of four people are working on the project. “One truck from Sucker Garden is also working, but the rest is not.”

Daal has no beef with Luciano Gumbs who got the contract but he is disappointed that MP Laville did not live up to his promises. “He promised to keep the boys off the block, but like this nobody is getting off the block.”

No jobs for Sucker Garden residents - “Laville did not live up to his promises” by admin