The Bottom, Saba- State Secretary of Social Affairs and Labor Tamara van Ark arrived on Saba Tuesday afternoon, June 25.

On Wednesday morning, June 26, the State Secretary will visit the Sacred Heart Primary School for the school breakfast. After that she will go to the construction site of the Under the Hill phase 2 project where 18 one, two and three-bedroom apartments will be built. At this location, Van Ark will meet one of the tenants.

Also Wednesday morning, the State Secretary will be present at the official kick-off of the pilot whereby the local representative of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor SZW will be stationed at the Community Development Department of the Public Entity Saba for a few days per week.

Van Ark will have lunch at Different Taste, a restaurant where people with a distance to the labor market work, before she leaves for the airport to travel on to St. Eustatius. Commissioner Rolando Wilson will accompany the State Secretary on all local visits. This is Van Ark’s second visit to Saba in 2019. In January she was also on the island at which time she visited the Laura Linzey Day Care and signed the BES(t)4Kids protocol, a program to strengthen the local day care and after school care facilities.

Meeting in St. Eustatius

Commissioners Wilson and Bruce Zagers and Island Secretary Tim Muller will be traveling to St. Eustatius on Wednesday for the so-called administrative consultation (bestuurlijk overleg) with all three Caribbean Netherlands islands on Thursday, June 27. On that same day, the Saba Package, a comprehensive, long-term development document, is scheduled to be signed. State Secretary Van Ark will attend the meetings on St. Eustatius, as will State Secretary of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Raymond Knops.