On Monday, June 20th, a Saba delegation consisting of Island Governor Jonathan Johnson, Commissioner Rolando Wilson, and Advisor Gerlad Simmons – de Jong had a morning workshop and meetings at the main office of Kadaster Netherlands in Apeldoorn. Head of Planning Bureau Bobby Zagers also joined via zoom.
The Saba delegation presented the land ownership registration issues that the community on Saba has. The goal of the meeting was to see how the Kadaster Netherlands can support the Public Entity Saba and other stakeholders to help the people of Saba resolve their land ownership registration problem.
Kadaster gave a presentation on the legal tasks of Kadaster in the chain of land ownership registration and the current assessment of the cadastral maps and field sketches. Kadaster invests a lot in the further improvement of the work on Saba. A big step forward is that the Kadaster Netherlands confirmed they could issue certificates of admeasurement (meetbrieven) again. Kadaster representatives explained that this was held up for over a year and a half because the source documents on people’s property on Saba were unavailable before because they were on Sint Maarten.
One of the other main bottlenecks is having accessible, affordable, and quality notary services. Kadaster Netherlands and the Saba delegation expressed the dire urgency for this service and that it would be good to facilitate a notary from the Netherlands for both Saba and Sint Eustatius. These were the main conversation topics for the rest of the meetings in the Netherlands for the Saba delegation.