Minister Vogelaar drops
Referral Index Antilleans
THE HAGUE--The Referral Index for Antilleans VIA is off for now. Dutch Minister of Integration Ella Vogelaar made the announcement during her visit to Curaçao on Monday. The general Referral Index for youngsters VIR will be introduced instead of the VIA.
According to Vogelaar, the VIR offers sufficient ways to aid problematic Antillean youngsters. Social workers will be encouraged to include the ethnicity of troublesome youngsters in their own dossiers, if that is relevant to the process of helping and coaching these young people.
Antillean organisations and lobbyists reacted ecstatically to the news. Glenn Helberg of the organisation of Antillean Caribbean persons OCaN lauded the Dutch and Antillean Governments for taking the political responsibility to jointly solve the problem of Antillean high-risk youngsters in the Netherlands, not through a VIA, but through dialogue.
“The solution is in cooperating,” said Helberg, assuring that his organisation would continue to assist in the process of creating better prospects for Antilleans in the Netherlands. He said it remained worrisome that so many high-risk youngsters ended in crime.
Raymond Labad, newly elected Chairman of the movement of Antillean and Aruban persons in the Netherlands MAAPP, said Vogelaar’s announcement confirmed that their intense lobbying and protesting against the VIA on local, national and European level had not been in vain.
Echoing Helberg’s sentiments, Labad too assured that MAAPP, together with OCaN, would continue to devote its efforts to help solve the issue of Antillean high-risk youngsters. He said he was happy that social workers had also protested against the VIA and they would play a vital role in getting help for this fragile group of Antilleans. “I am convinced that these youngsters also want help,” he concluded.
Ed Gumbs, a member of Minister Vogelaar’ labour party PvdA who has been fighting the VIA tooth and nail, said he was a “happy man” now that the index was out of the picture. “I was always confident my fellow party member Minister Vogelaar would come to her senses in due time,” said Gumbs, who coincidently was visiting St. Maarten on Monday.
The Christian Union (CU), part of the Dutch cabinet of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, also welcomed Vogelaar’s decision. “Now there is clarity and cooperation to come with a true solution,” said CU Member of Parliament Cynthia Ortega-Martijn, who has opposed the VIA since the start and had asked written questions about this issue.
The CU is against registration of persons based on ethnicity. According to Ortega-Martijn, the discussion about the VIA even threatened to obstruct the talks for new constitutional relations in the Dutch Kingdom.
Minister Vogelaar stressed in her press release that an “effective and coordinated approach” was still needed to tackle the Antillean high-risk youngsters. That is why she will be encouraging social workers to document the youngsters’ backgrounds in their files. This applies not only to Antillean youngsters, but also to their peers originating from Morocco.
Vogelaar discussed the VIA with Antillean Prime Minister Emily de Jongh-Elhage on Monday. The Antillean Government has been vehemently protesting against the VIA. “The Netherlands is showing that it that it has understanding for the objections that repeatedly have been voiced,” Vogelaar stated.
Vogelaar’s colleague Minister of Youth and Family André Rouvoet (CU) is working on adapting the law on youth care to improve the coordination of aid for high-risk youngsters. This change in the law would facilitate the introduction of the VIR, a system to signal problems with youngsters. Vogelaar and Rouvoet are of the opinion that social workers need to know these youngsters’ backgrounds to help them efficiently.
The 21 so-called “Antillean” municipalities in the Netherlands, cities with large concentrations of (problematic) Antilleans, will participate in the testing phase of the VIR.
