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The Daily Herald writes that in his latest letter letter about the evaluation, the minister mentioned two other issues: the support that the PUM Netherlands senior experts organisation may be giving Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba, and the blocking of Internet Protocol (IP) address in the Caribbean Netherlands by certain Dutch websites.
Member of Parliament (MP) Hachchi had asked the minister through an adopted motion in November last year to find a solution for the IP address issue so people in the Caribbean Netherlands could have the same access to Dutch websites as people living in the Netherlands. The blocking of the IP address prevents island residents from watching some media programmes on the internet. This mostly has to do with copy rights that are limited to a certain region. It is up to the content providers to decide which regions are blocked, explained Plasterk. The minister said the Dutch Government didn’t have the legal authority to force the content providers to allow the IP addresses of people on the islands, but he did promise to point out to the content providers that Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba were part of the Netherlands and that as such the people there should have the same access.
In relation to a request of MP Roelof van Laar of the Labour Party PvdA to look at the possibilities of support from the PUM Netherlands senior experts for the Caribbean Netherlands, Plasterk said that there has been contact with the director of said voluntary consultation organisation. PUM may very well have an added value not only for the Caribbean Netherlands, but also for the countries Aruba, Curaçao and St. Maarten. The Executive Councils of Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba are positive about PUM’s involvement. It would be up to the overseas countries to decide whether they wanted to make use of PUM’s services. “There would be no principal reasons why PUM could not be active there,” stated Plasterk.
PUM connects entrepreneurs in developing countries and emerging markets with senior experts from the Netherlands each of whom has gained at least 30 years of experience in a business environment. These senior experts voluntarily devote their knowledge to the execution of short-term, solid consultancy projects at the work floor.
