The Prime Minister of St. Maarten the Honorable Sarah Wescot-Williams opened the Civil Servant’s Workshop on the new structure and development of the Government of St. Maarten at the University of St. Maarten on Tuesday. Although the workshops started unofficially on Monday, the Prime Minister opened the workshops officially Tuesday morning as she was attending the Ibero-Amercian conference in Cadiz, Spain.
The workshop, which was funded in part by USONA, was geared towards making civil servants more aware of the various agencies and entities within Government and what their roles are for Country St. Maarten. "Governments budget in itself has several allocations for the training of Civil Servants because we believe that while it is important to have these new structures in place, we recognize that the most important part to having those structures work is the people that are working in them. It is therefore important that all of us are well versed in the jobs which we have to do. All of the agencies of Government have their independent roles in this very climate since 10-10-10 and we are working hard to have everything structured to ensure that government is working for the people. We no longer have others doing the work for us, but we are now independently molding and shaping the infrastructure necessary for country St. Maarten. Civil Servants, meaning the workers for Government, have a critical role to play in this respect," commented the Prime Minister during her remarks at the official opening.
The two-week long workshop will feature presentations from the Council of Ministers, the Governor’s Cabinet, the Social and Economic Council, the Council of Advice, the National Ombudsman and the General Audit Chamber explaining civil servants of the new organizational structure and the development of Country St. Maarten.
"We will be bringing in all of the civil servants on the different days where we will be discussing your goals in the running of Government. We are all of us together forming Government so I encourage all of you to interact and discuss the topics necessary in fine tuning our work. I believe this is another important building block in terms of training and preparing Civil Servants for the important job which they have to execute," concluded the PM.