This is a trip down memory lane to March 2020. Covid19 arrived here and the discussions among economists started, is it smarter to fire employees, and allow businesses a neutral, dormant position until the economy kicks back up, or retain employees at a reduced salary, until an eventual turn around.
Many businesses opted to show employees the door, and many locals found themselves without any income. As an immediate solution for an acute need, Minister Glenbert Croes came up with an idea, namely Fondo di Asistencia Social di Emergencia, FASE, which would grant the unemployed up to Awg 900 a month.
He then set out to put an improvised, temporary administrational body together, to review and approve subsidies, bringing together a motley crew of random employees from different government departments. This rag-tag team of no-doubt hard-working, but certainly overwhelmed bureaucrats accepted more than 8 thousand petitions, distributed more than FIFTY MILLION florins, and operated until November 2021.
All along, there was no effort to anchor this public-fund-distribution-machine by law, until recently, as the national auditors, Algemene Rekenkamer Aruba (ARA) y Centrale Accountants Dienst (CAD) issued a scathing report.
They reported glaring irregularities, and outright fraud. They discovered dead people, salaried government employees, contracted consultants, and pensioners, even reportedly two policemen, on the list of FASE recipients.
As you know, SVB, the island’s social security bank was put in charge of trying to collect all the overpaid financial aid monies, from companies, now the challenge of trying to collect all the overpaid financial aid monies from individuals. is even greater.
Not surprisingly, the auditors also reported favoritism among those who got and those who didn’t get a thing.
Originally, when it became clear that Aruba is terribly broke, GOA employee salary reductions were introduced Entitled government employees, while feeling wronged, reluctantly went along since GOA suggested their 12.6% sacrifice was funneled into FASE, in order to pay less-fortunate locals. Solidarity felt good, until it was discovered that some companies while deducting the funds, had held on to the money, and GOA just drowned the funds in its coffers, to help pay bills, no solidarity here.
After discussing the issue in parliament for more than 12 hours, the law legalizing the FASE payments finally passed yesterday, along the lines of political alignment, with MEP and RAIZ pro and AVP, MAS and ACCION21 contra.
As a result of the scathing criticism, and the fact that FASE had no legal basis for the distribution of public funds, the opposition parties filed a vote of no-confidence against the two ministers involved in the FASE saga, the Minister of Finance and Culture and the above Minister of Labor, Integration and Energy. The motion failed to gain support on the coalition benches and was defeated. Both ministers survived.
Incidentally, this was not the first time where Glenbert Croes, as a government minister, took a deliberate decision, regarding the distribution of public funds, without a legal basis. One third of his salary was deducted, over a long period of time, to repay that first blunder, of overstepping his legal authority. This time he got away with it.
There was an acute need, he came up with a populist idea, parliament went along. there was no one to stop him!
