On Friday, April 1st, Commissioner Rolando Wilson and Gerald Simmons met with Ms. Nathalie Tackling from the Saba legal desk. Commissioner Wilson and Gerald discussed the operations of the legal desk on Saba and how services are going and shared ideas on improving the services. In the coming three months, we will make a plan to move forward with the legal desk. Part of this will be to provide clarity to the community on what the legal desk can and cannot do, which is essential for expectation management. Another aspect is that we will look into ways to improve response and a local presence on Saba.’ Said Tackling.
Tackling and Commissioner Wilson talked about land issues on Saba. ‘We started a project together some years back to solve the land issues of the people of Saba. We need to evaluate what works and what doesn’t work and develop a plan. Considering the different challenges surrounding prescriptive rights claims such as the recent development surrounding notary services, developing cadaster services, land measuring developments and other aspects such as gathering information for family trees and other statements needed.’ Said Wilson.
The idea now is that the Public Entity Saba, together with the other different stakeholders in the coming months, work on a plan on how to go about prescriptive rights claims. We understand there is some unrest because solving the land issues takes longer than expected, and because of this, we need a new plan. The government is currently working on facilitating the resolution of land issues as best as possible for the community.
Commissioner Wilson would like to urge persons to reach out to the legal desk with their land issues to get the process started. To reach a positive conclusion, though, the situation with the notary services is something that we are also looking to resolve with the relevant department from the Ministry of Justice in Den Haag.