Philipsburg:--- Labour Minister Maria Buncamper Molanus announced on Wednesday that her Ministry is currently working on some more amendments to the labour policy. The Minister said those amendments should reach her office by Friday this week. Areas of the policy to be amended are the age limits, timeline, the three year aspect of the policy and the process itself. The Minister said the idea is to also look at the processing time because they are of the opinion that the procedure can be more efficient.The Minister said persons applying for work and residency permits have to duplicate the procedures with documents. The Minister said there are cases where documents are expiring because one process took longer than the other. She said government is going further in examining the policy rather than making some cosmetic changes. The focus she said is to create more jobs for locals while following the labour regulations.
Buncamper Molanus said her Ministry is yet to discuss with the justice Ministry as to how they would proceed with the BTA procedure. However, she said that this is something that has to be done since it is her intention to make sure people who were registered are not treated unfairly.
In the meantime, the Minister said that while the management of the St. Maarten Medical Centre would have to deal with the incident that took place at the hospital involving two specialists, her Ministry via the inspector of health is looking into the matter where it is alleged that unregistered persons are practicing medicine at the St. Maarten Medical Centre.
