Plans for Country St. Maarten
on IC agenda for discussion
PHILIPSBURG--The plans for the new Ministries of country St. Maarten will be discussed in a public meeting of the Island Council today, Monday. The meeting is scheduled to start at 2:00pm.
The new organisational structure for country St. Maarten includes not only the plans for the new Ministries, but also an impression of the personnel needed for country St. Maarten.
In this regard, St. Maarten made agreements with other islands of the Netherlands Antilles and the Central Government during a December 8, 2007, consultation led by Constitutional Affairs Minister Roland Duncan.
The document initialled after the meeting specified that all civil servants working in the Island Territory of St. Maarten would come into the employ of country St. Maarten, taking into consideration the nature and duration of their current employment.
If the Central Government wants to take on new persons in the future to work in St. Maarten or wants to transfer persons to St. Maarten, consultation must take place with the Executive Council of St. Maarten. The islands agreed that each island would be responsible for all persons working for the Central Government on that island.
Parties also agreed on the establishing of a Social Statute and a plan for the transfer of the personnel. Some matters that must be taken up in the Social Statute are that the position for the workers will be guaranteed, a placement procedure has to be put in place, and the possibility must exist for persons to appeal a particular decision as far as it pertains to them.
Also there will be a complementing policy in terms of training and extra conditions applying to the workers and implementation of all these points will be in collaboration with the unions.
The document indicated also that the respective entities would be responsible for their workers, the rights of their workers and former workers.
Other agenda points for today’s Island Council meeting are a compromise agreement with Albo N.V. for a piece of land in the Zagersgut area and an appeal procedure of Winnover N.V. to obtain a director’s licence for one of its workers.
