PHILIPSBURG:---- Member of Parliament George Pantophlet said he has given the respective Ministers responsible for the following enough time to present them to Parliament. He is referring to the Initiative Law on the Amendment of Book 7 of the Civil Code to deal with the abuse of the short term contract which was started by the faction of the National Alliance some 42 months ago. He understood that several changes were made buy the Minister and presented to the Council of Ministers. The Member of Parliament needs a copy the draft is with the proposed changes that were made.' Another is the draft policy on the St. Maarten Tourism Authority which is also pending and others such as the Casino Gaming Board which he heard is controlled or should be supervised by the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten and the Office for the Control of Unusual Transactions is still needed. Otherwise one has to explain why the Island of Curacao has such a board. The other draft is the one on the Dividends from government owned companies. On this point the Member of Parliament was not surprised to read where the Committee For Financial Supervision echoed his statements of some 3 years ago during the 2011 budget when he asked why is it that government are cash strapped and have government owned companies who are financially sound but they are not contributing sufficiently to government coffers. Another is the Consumer Protection Agency. Persons who purchase merchandise that are sometimes defective have no recourse when they want to launch a complain. This brings to mind the draft law to have a small claims court established on St. Maarten which was presented by Acting Governor Mr. Ronald Groeneveldt. He also hopes that controls are still being carried out by the department of economic affairs as it relates to the gas stations and also the Supermarkets. With regards to the gas stations he is talking about the famous gasoline measuring tank which he found out some years ago was never controlled for years. In addition to that the matter of the additional basket of goods. He was told that it is a difficult task. However where there is a will there is a way. Not wanting to deviate too much from the matter at hand, the Member of Parliament says that as a representative of the people vital components such as cost of living, the cost of health care, aging population and so on are issues that must be dealt with. And therefore the abuse of the short term contract will provide steady employment and hence reduce uncertainty and hardship among employees. This in turn will provide more revenues to support the pension fund and other vital institutions. Also If government owned companies in addition to the concession which some pay, contribute by paying dividends will again put more monies in government coffers. And with this government can pay the SZV, the General Pension Fund and other creditors. Finally on another note we are going into another December since the court case with the AUC 100 million guilders court case was supposed to have started, what's happening?
