The Prime Minister of St. Maarten received a courtesy visit from (Melennium Development Goal) MDG Program Manager Loekie Morales and MDG Acceleration Framework (MAF) consultant the Honorable Sarmite Bulte at her Cabinet on Monday. During the meeting the Prime Minister, as the Minister of General Affairs and of the Mellenium Development Goal Framework for St. Maarten, received an update from the representatives regarding St. Maarten focussing on sustainable development coming out of the 2011 MDG report.
Photocaption: From left to right: Honorable Sarmite Bulte, St. Maarten’s Prime Minister Sarah Wescot Williams and Drs. Loekie Morales of the Department of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BAK).
In 2000, 189 countries of the United Nations, including the Kingdom of the Netherlands, made a promise to free people from extreme poverty and multiple deprivations. This pledge turned into the eight Millennium Development Goals. According to the ‘First Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Report Curaçao & Sint Maarten 2011’, Sint Maarten is lagging behind with MDG 1 (Eradication of extreme poverty) and MDG 7 (Environmental sustainability).
Honorable Sarmite Bulte, a MDG Acceleration Framework (MAF) consultant, hired by the government of Sint Maarten and UNDP has been on Sint Maarten to meet stakeholders and to lead a Methodological workshop on applying the MAF process to accelerate progress for MDG 1 and 7; both within the context of a sustainable development vision for St. Maarten. This workshop will take place on February 18th and 19th with the overall objective being to bring together relevant decision makers, senior technical representatives from ministries, institutions, NGOs, the private sector and development partners to build a common understanding of the cross sectoral challenges for those goals and their role in the MAF process. The Workshop will also seek to discover which impediments are preventing MDG 1 and 7 from achieving their expected targets. Two concrete pilot projects will be defined, funded and executed within the mentioned areas of Poverty Alleviation and Environmental Sustainability.
The Prime Minister was pleased to meet with Mrs. Bulte, who, together with Drs. Loekie Morales, Program Manager and responsible for MDG’s, will organize the workshop of which the sessions will be directed toward attaining initial agreement on the identified high impact interventions. The Prime Minister also explained that coming out of the MDG Report the two areas that were highlighted showed that some development lacked in two specific areas and pledged that Government will address these two areas specifically. "In the process we will be placing considerable focus on the two identified Millennium Development goals to move this country forward in the areas of Goal 1: poverty eradication and Goal 2: environmental sustainability," concluded the Prime Minister.