THE HAGUE – Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten would like to reform, but not as quickly as the Dutch cabinet asks. The pace that the Netherlands is demanding in exchange for aid is too high, the plenipotentiary ministers of the Caribbean countries of the Kingdom said after consultation with the Dutch government.
They believe that more attention should be paid to local conditions. “The differences are not being considered. We have difficulty with that,” said Guillfred Besaril from Aruba. “The situation on Sint Maarten is completely different after the devastating hurricane than on Curaçao. “The islands are facing economic problems because the tourism sector has come to a complete standstill due to the corona crisis. They have already received two aid packages recently and a third package is now being negotiated.
According to Undersecretary Raymond Knops of Kingdom Relations, approximately 350 million euros was spent. In the end, according to him, it can “go up to the billion euros”.
Ghost civil servants
What the reforms entail is still unclear for the plenipotentiary ministers, said Rene Violenus of Saint Maarten. “We have not received any documents to gain insight.”
But sources report that one of the requirements is that there is a separate administrative body on the islands that distributes the money and checks whether the new and earlier conditions have been met.
In The Hague, for example, people would be annoyed by “ghost civil servants”. Too often, new governments would put confidants in positions, and they would not be dismissed at the end of the term, but would not have much work to do either. A condition for the loans is therefore also that further cuts are made in the civil service.
No gifts
Another requirement would also be to look at pension expenditure. In addition, the islands should take more measures against corruption. For example, Sint Maarten has legislation in place for stricter integrity rules, which the government wants to introduce now.
Since the plenipotentiary ministers have not yet officially heard the demands, they have no response yet. “We are not against reforms, we have imposed them on ourselves,” said Anthony Begina from Curaçao. He emphasizes that there is no manpower on the islands to make cuts in the short term. The people who should be doing that are still busy fighting the corona crisis.
Next Friday, the knot about the support package will have to be cut by an extra inserted Kingdom Council of Ministers. “We don’t ask for gifts,” Begina emphasized. “Only for loans that we can only get from the Netherlands.”
Requirements second package
For the second aid package, the Netherlands had requested that ministers and members of Parliament on the three islands to surrender a quarter of their fringe benefits. A 12.5 percent cut was required from civil servants and directors of public companies.
Riots broke out in Curaçao at the end of last month, after garbage collectors were told that some of them would be fired because there was no money left to pay them.
