Unbiased look at the Sint Maarten Elections
The governing accord of the incoming UP/De Weever coalition announced in Wednesday's paper specifically mentions "finalising and implementing the changes in the Civil Code that regulate short-term labour contracts and finalising the process related to execution of Article 10 of the "Uitvoeringsbesluit arbeid vreemdelingen" as approved by the Council of Ministers on August 12, 2014 (the "Counterpart Policy")."
That's not really surprising, as the main reason current Labour Minister Cornelius de Weever gave for deciding to take his DP seat and form an alliance with UP was that the envisioned NA/DP/US Party government would not include the counterpart requirement in its programme. Outgoing Prime Minister and DP leader Sarah Wescot-Williams said it was not necessary because it already had been given the green light, but the latter apparently did not convince De Weever.
So, the public can fully expect this regulation to be enforced in the near future, despite concerns expressed by employers' organisation SHTA and in the Tripartite Labour Committee. To what extent these objections will be taken into account remains to be seen, but the necessary caution is certainly called for.
As pointed out before, strictly applying across the board a mandatory counterpart rule for any foreigner with an employment permit could have disastrous implications. One must keep in mind that businesses already have invested time, money and energy into these workers, so now making them hire a local trainee for all at their own cost simply isn't realistic.
A system focussing on new permit requests and not extensions might be more feasible, but even then each individual case must be looked at, so the companies involved don't have to incur cost they can't afford just because there is no suitable candidate readily available on the island to do the job as needed and someone has to be brought in from abroad. Moreover, if government wants to do this, it should at least provide incentives in terms of exempting entrepreneurs from paying taxes and/or social premiums for these counterparts, who will require salaries and workplaces as it is.
