It was a great moment for our MinPres, she posted: Patience delivers glory, on her FB page and announced to her ambtenaren, our government employees, that the 12.6% reduction of their salary, imposed early in the pandemic, 2020, as a solidarity measure with those who lost their livelihood in the private sector, is gone.
The measure was also regarded as a reduction in GOA’s expenses, a condition for Dutch liquidity support.
Friday, the Dutch allowed the reduction to be waved, nixed, with conditions.
Who cares about the conditions?
The focus was the restoration of public sector salaries to pre-pandemic levels.
GOA employees will be paid partially beginning in July 2022, then full amounts in 2023, including vacation pay.
It was thanks to MinPres’ tireless advocacy that the measure was removed, and public employees can now breathe again.
The secretary of State Alexandra van Huffelen agreed. She is getting ready to visit the Dutch Caribbean in the coming week and took a break in shopping for a designer wardrobe to announce that the move is justified, in view of worldwide inflation, and will serve as compensation for the rise in the cost of living. Van Huffelen will be visiting three Caribbean countries May 23rd to 27th.
She did mention the conditions too, and here they are:
The Aruba parliament has been working on the adoption of a law, the Wever-Croes norm referred to as LNT, standardizing top incomes. Heads of state-companies will no longer earn exorbitant salaries. Their pay scale will be anchored by law, as comparable to that of MinPres.
Opposition leaders were fast to point out that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
The second condition talks about Aruba’s budget, which must reflect all of the country’s expenses, including the 12.6% additional funds required to supplement public sector salaries.
The third condition requires the 25% salary cuts of politicians, to remain. Their level of pay will not revert to pre-pandemic level.
MinPres thanked all public and semi-public employees for their patience, and sacrifices. The negotiations were hard and took a long time, she said, but the results were positive.
My friends explain that there was no legal basis, to withholding the funds any longer. They also say that the ‘Tax Reform’ is coming, with the goal of extracting AWG 100 million more, from the private sector, perhaps Awg 125m.
Again, it is the private sector of this island, YOU AND ME, that is paying for the public sector.
