Wednesday 1 March 2006
ARUBA – Parliamentarian Rudy Lampe (RED) wants to know more about the increase of the pensionable salary of higher government officials, a decision of the council of ministers on December 18th, 2003.
With this decision, nine scale 16 government officials received an increase of 25 percent on their pensionable salaries. They retired between April 12th, 2000 and December 31st, 2004.
For these nine government official, this increase was a huge raise. Lampe suspects that also former MEP-parliamentarians Booshi Wever and Nelson Oduber secured financial advantages with this national decision, because their pensionable salaries are linked to those of the government officials.
In a letter to Prime Minister Nelson Oduber (MEP), Lampe is asking about this decision. He fears that the decision will have big financial consequences for the National Government, because also other public servants would demand the increase of their pensionable income by appealing to the principle of equality. This was one of the drawbacks of the Advisory Council against the proposal at that time.
Lampe says that the challenged decision came into being without involvement of the government departments in question and the Advisory Council gave a negative advice on this. Another thing is that the public servants’ salaries were not revised after this decision.
If it turns out that the regulation was not legal, Lampe wonders whether the ministers that took that decision can be held financially liable for the money that was already paid out. “Analogous to the case of former minister Glenbert Croes that now has to pay the money back”, said Lampe.
Some of the nine top officials that profit from the national decision are former director of the Economic Affairs Administration and MEP-advisor, Humphrey van Trigt, Henriette Nassy and John de Vries, both of the Legislation Administration. Other are beneficiaries are former DINA-director Andres Pauline and former member of the Advisory Council Lili Marval, who at that time had advised against the regulation.
Lampe doesn’t think that he will get an answer on his questions. “Up till now, all my questions are still unanswered. But I’ll keep hoping.”
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