PHILIPSBURG--The Justice Ministry has finalised the new policy to grant independent entrepreneurship licences to exotic dancers who wish to operate in St. Maarten.

 

The issuing of an independent entrepreneurship licence comes on the heels of Government discontinuing the issuance of work and residence permits to adult entertainment centres for exotic dancers in their employ.

 

Speaking on a midday radio programme on PJD3 102.7FM on Tuesday, Finance Minister Richard Gibson, the former interim Justice Minister, said he understood that the policy had been finalised.

 

Government stopped issuing work and residence permits to clubs after a court rendered a decision that based on international law, under the previous policy Government could be held as a “conspirator in committing a crime” as far as human slavery was concerned.

 

“When a court says you are a co-conspirator in committing a crime of slavery and participating in commercial slavery, you don’t want to continue to do what you’re doing for the Prosecutor to pick you up,” Gibson said in response to a listener’s question as to why Government had stopped issuing work and residence permits without a policy first being in place for the new arrangement.

 

“We didn’t have any choice. We had to stop that activity or run the risk that they will come knocking on your doors.

 

“Government has been issuing permits to these clubs under international law and, according to a decision that the court handed down, the club owners, by soliciting entertainers to work in their clubs, were committing the crime of slavery. And the Government is also liable and punishable by issuing these permits to these club owners to allow them to participate in the committing of the crime.”

 

Gibson said the issuance of permits had been stopped as soon as the court decision had been brought to Government’s attention. “I stopped it right away and then started to work on new policy which I understood is competed and will be the same policy as in Bonaire.”

 

He said exotic dancers were the ones who would granted the new entrepreneurship permits, not the club owners, “because the problem of human slavery comes in when a contract is executed between a club owner and entertainer – that they are working 40, 50 or 60 hours a week and they have to rent a roof from them [club owners – Ed.] and whether they are sick, tired or whatever, they have to perform.”

 

“There was no freedom of these commercial workers by executing the contract that was customary in the past. To be able to have that person in complete freedom to do their business that person is the only person who can get the permit and not the club owner,” Gibson noted.

 

The Daily Herald