Philipsburg:--- Employees of the federal tax receiver's office on St. Maarten gathered at the government administrative building on Monday morning hoping that the commissioner of finance and personnel affairs Xavier Blackman could meet with them to discuss their statuses.Ingrid Romney of the Inspectorate of taxes and WICSU told SMN News that they are six days away from 10/10/10 and while the workers of the tax department would fall under country St. Maarten they did not receive their lands besluit for them to know their statuses neither did they get their back payment and other adjustments that are due to them.
Romney said the workers were promised this, that and the other but there was nothing on paper meaning it was not rectified. Romney said it has been a few weeks now they were told that the lands besluit would have been ready and it was not. She said the date for Country is fast approaching and no one from the island government neither the federal government has seen it fit to meet with them to update them on their statuses. Romney said because the workers were not getting what is due to them and answers they decided to go to the government building to seek out the information.
Alicia Barry representative of ABVO told the workers that the Minister De Lannoy had informed the ABVO that she was going to fax the lands besluit to the St. Maarten and it would have been distributed to them on the spot. Barry said the workers of the Federal Tax Department did not get their re-evaluations since 2002 while the other federal civil servants working in other departments on the island have received theirs, and as such the workers she represents wants to get their evaluations and they are also demanding that Curacao pay them out before St. Maarten takes on its country status. "We want to know how much money is owed to us, and we also want to know how and when our monies will be paid to us."
The workers and their representatives were received by head of Finance and future Minister of Finance for Country St. Maarten Hiro Shigemoto who eventually made contact with the Minister was able to get the Lands Besluit which was distributed to the workers while they were staging their silent protest.
Barry said Shigemoto has promised the union and the workers to get the monies that are owed to them from Curacao so he could make their payments. "Now we have our Lands Besluit we are going back to work but we are going to be here again to get our monies," she concluded.