Since 2020, Prime Minister Evelyn Wever Croes has signed for Aruba to be bound to a “Landenpakket” and what has been changing since 2020, is the bag in which this “Landenpakket” is worn, according to AVP party leader Mike Eman.
The leader of the AVP faction in Parliament Eman went on to indicate that every year or two there are protests in the community, when the package of the “Landenpakket” containing all the measures is changed.
“Measures that our people are formally feeling like double taxation, double border taxation, cuts in sanitation, changes in labor laws, all the problems that public workers are now facing, such as performance management that was introduced.
Each of these pains, among other things, has to do with the fact that the salaries of our citizens have not been adjusted, people with a limited livelihood, where our faction during several budget meetings has presented a petition to adjust this, to increase the “repair gap” since the cost of living is unaffordable in Aruba.
But what we see is that the government is doing a whole road show again and Evelyn and her government have changed the bag in which the Landenpakket is worn.
At the time, it was called the CHE and on the occasion of the AVP leader Marlon Sneek along with Richard Arends and other members of the faction handed in notes showing that this is not good, since it takes away the autonomy of Aruba, where it places an instance that does not have the right according to the Statute to determine issues that are Aruba’s issues.
When we look at statements by Staatssecretaris van Huffelen who said “het gaat allemaal prima” we can see what the problem is when we add a package of things that concern our country, that concern the medicine of our elders, that concern what our children pay for school fees, which are again being increased.
And what is the position of our employees in this country, where every month we see things go backwards, Aruba is living in these moments, where 50,000 people are under the salary they need to survive.
It’s not Mike Eman and AVP who say this but the Central Bureau of Statistics itself says this, that the “minimum living wage” that exists at this moment, means that if you calculate the minimum wage or those with incomes below 3500, those above, our pensioners are all living below the poverty line in Aruba