Minister for Poverty Policy Carola Schouten will visit the Caribbean Netherlands in a week and a half to consult with employers about raising the statutory minimum wage. In addition, the Thode committee’s recommendation is on the table to increase the WML to $1,750, more than 40% more than the current one.

The minister announced her visit to the islands yesterday during a conversation with the Senate Committee on Kingdom Relations. She immediately tempered expectations by stressing that the gap to be bridged is very large and that an increase must be done in a responsible manner, especially in view of the fact that the islands have many small entrepreneurs who do not have tight finances themselves.

Commission Chairman Paul Rosenmöller expressed the broad feeling with his advice to the minister to act as if she were a missionary and to get to work quickly with the advice of the Thode Committee. Sp’er Bastiaan van Apeldoorn pointed Schouten to an almost unanimously adopted motion from 2016 in which the government was called upon to introduce a social minimum in the Caribbean Netherlands. Seven years have passed. Why did it take so long?” Rosenmöller: “If the islands would have been located within the European Netherlands, it would have been settled a long time ago.”

Peter NicolaI (Party for the Animals) noted that the government will now do what residents of the islands have had to wait for years in poverty: “Is it not fair to compensate for that?”
“The government does not intend to do that,” Schouten replied.