Young cricket players
reunited with families
PHILIPSBURG--The two eleven-year-old cricket players who were detained by the Immigration Department on Sunday on their return to St. Maarten from Anguilla, where they represented St. Maarten in a cricket match, were reunited with their families on Wednesday.
The two, who were part of an under-13 selection of the St. Maarten Cricket Association (SMCA), were arrested because they did not have legal documents to re-enter the island. Both youngsters were accommodated at the I Can Foundation Children’s Home.
SMCA Vice-President Nathaniel Walter and Treasurer Rajesh Kurup said the Association had done everything within its power since Sunday to reunite the two boys, one from Guyana and the other of Jamaican descent, with their respective families.
SMCA doubled its efforts to have the boys released after it learned Wednesday of the fire that engulfed the children’s home where they were detained. This resulted in both boys being reunited with their respective families.
One of the boys will be repatriated to Guyana next week Monday. SMCA was instrumental in purchasing an airplane ticket and in providing the escort of a flight attendant.
The other boy was born in St. Maarten. His father, who is of Jamaican origin, has a Dutch passport. SMCA has sought assistance of a lawyer to petition the court in an attempt to keep the child on the island.
SMCA refuted statements made by mothers of the under-13 players that the association was to be blamed for the problem, not the Immigration officers who were doing their job.
“SMCA admits it has made a mistake in assuming that these players had the proper documents in their possession. That was an oversight. We will make sure that this same mistake won’t be made again. We apologise to the families involved for having them going through this ordeal.
“But this does not discharge parents of their own responsibility towards their children in providing them with the necessary documents. We only had good intentions in taking these children to this tournament in Anguilla. We wanted to make them better players by giving them some experience with hard-ball cricket,” Kurup told The Daily Herald on Wednesday evening.
Both board members denied that SMCA President Police Chief Commissioner Derrick Holiday had given undocumented cricket players a “comfort zone” while representing the association during tournaments abroad. “We are law-abiding citizens. It is not our policy to have undocumented players in our teams while travelling abroad,” Walter and Kurup said.
“We are extremely proud of our young and talented cricketers in the under-11, -13, -15 and -19 teams. Some of them made it in the St. Maarten and Leeward Islands squads, and maybe some of them will even make it into the West Indies team someday. We are working towards that goal,” said Kurup. “We want to get youngsters involved in this sport. We don’t want to cause traumas.”
