SXMElections.com

PHILIPSBURG--One of the great hurdles faced by people born outside of St. Maarten – acquiring certified copies of birth and other certificates with vital statistics from their country of origin – may soon become a thing of the past thanks to a motion tabled by independent Member of Parliament (MP) Leona Marlin-Romeo that was accepted unanimously by Parliament on Thursday afternoon.

The motion sets the Marcel Gumbs Cabinet to work on the establishment of “an Integral Copy Registry.”

The registry not only will make life easier for Dutch citizens, but will generate additional funds for Government’s coffers. This group of Dutch citizens will pay in St. Maarten for copies of their needed documents instead of requesting and paying for the vital certificates in their country of origin.

Marlin-Romeo explained that once the original/source documents were registered in the Integral Copy Registry, a copy of the original document would become a new official product to be used for administrative purposes.

The Civil Registry Department, with the establishment of the Integral Copy Registry, also will be empowered “to destroy acknowledgements and name-change certificates after 18 months as stipulated by law.”

Marlin-Romeo, the former head of the Civil Registry, knows firsthand that Dutch citizens not born in St. Maarten face tremendous hurdles to obtain original certificates for administrative purposes such as renewal of their passports.

Motivating the need for establishing the registry, Marlin-Romeo said in the plenary session of Parliament that this would assist the 5,704 registered Dutch citizens born in Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Statia and the Netherlands, and the 24,621 Dutch citizens registered here who were born outside of the kingdom.

Her unanimously accepted motion “requests” that Prime Minister/General Affairs Minister Marcel Gumbs “ensure that a separate registry is created to accommodate the registry of births, marriages, deaths acknowledgements, name change and adoption of persons registered in St. Maarten, but born, married or died outside of the island.”

The motion also called for the relevant laws to be amended to accommodate the persons for whom the registry will be created.

The minister also is to ensure that the Civil Registry is appointed the entity that registers the foreign personal documents so that those making use of it “will be able to acquire an official copy of their birth certificate, marriage certificate or death certificate.”

The minister, based on the motion, also is to ensure that the “integral copies are recognised as official Government-issued documents.”