Today’s report that the pension rights of some 150 (retired) teachers and other school personnel in the BES islands (Bonaire, St Eustatius and Saba) have been restored will no doubt be welcomed by those directly involved and their families. It’s good news for the economies of the islands in terms of income as well.
The Ministry of Education in The Hague made 2.7 million euros available to the Pension Fund Caribbean Netherlands PCN for this purpose. The money will be used to correct errors made in transferring this group from the former Netherlands Antilles Pension Fund APNA to PCN due to the constitutional reforms within the Dutch Kingdom per 10-10-10.
It’s also an example of how annoying issues resulting from the three islands becoming
special overseas public entities of the Netherlands are slowly but surely being resolved. Earlier, another two million euros was spent by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations to rectify a similar situation among civil servants who went over to the National Service Caribbean Netherlands RCN.
It was recently announced too that an additional injection of US $31 million was provided to strengthen PCN’s working capital, starting with $25 million by the end of 2018 and then $1 million annually for the next six years. This basically confirms no further reduction in pension benefits of up to another 12 per cent as feared after the 3.5 per cent cut in April 2017 will be needed.
So, while there is undoubtedly still discontent especially in Statia over the new status and in some cases perhaps justified, one cannot deny that efforts to address certain underlying causes continue to take place like now with the pension problems. Other examples include the introduction of a family allowance, while a majority in the Second Chamber currently supports increasing the social allowance.
At lot obviously remains to be done, but if one looks in an objective way at the reality on the ground also regarding education and health care there simply appears to be little basis for the persistent narrative that people are generally worse off than before.
