On Wednesday morning, the Trade Union TOPA approached the Government at the Government’s Office with a manifest on the issue of Performance Management System. Prime Minister Evelyn Wever-Croes, Minister Geoffrey Wever and Minister Rocco Tjon received the Trade Unionists.
The Prime Minister stressed that Performance Management System is a system that undoubtedly everyone is convinced of its importance for the public sector. It is a uniform system to evaluate the performance of all public employees. This way you can evaluate how the job is going and if the public employee will be entitled to get a promotion. The reason why the Aruban Government introduced this system is because before this there was no uniform system to evaluate in the public sector. Some government departments have their own system, while others do not have such an elaborate system.
Complaints came in from public employees that in some departments, employees have easy enough promotions while in other departments, this is very difficult. Employees also claim that they do not know on what they are being evaluated, and have to wait until the end of the year to find out the results of their evaluation. In our time, these are things that cannot continue to happen in the government departments. With the Performance Management System, each employee has to know in advance on what he is being evaluated and the employee himself also indicates what are the tasks and goals he wants to achieve. Throughout the year, the department head will evaluate each employee. “This is a system that I am sure everyone is behind,” the Prime Minister emphasized.
The Law of Performance Management System was introduced last year and entered into force in January of this year. The unions, however, approached the government to make some changes. The Government invited all the unions but only TOPA continued at the table with the Government and have brought their points to the attention of the Government. Along with its manifesto, the TOPA Union brought a report, and handed it to the Prime Minister. This report had already been submitted by the TOPA Union to the Technical Commission instituted by the Government, but they did not received a feedback in this regard, which is why they submitted their manifest requesting to the Government for a response within two weeks.
I thanked TOPA Union for always stayed at the table with the Government and always having a constructive attitude and position to reach a solution. The Government will evaluate the submitted documents in Council of Ministers and will meet with the Union on their points of concern in order to finish this year. This year was considered a pilot in terms of the execution of the Performance Management System. In 2024 starts the implementation completely taking into account what the unions brought forward. Although not all the unions sat at the table with the Commission that the Government instituted, the Government took into account all the concerns in order to make Prestatie Management System a better product that at the end of the day Aruba can benefit from a product that we all believe in and can be applied in all Government departments and the public sector, with a uniformed evaluation system, the Prime Minister Evelyn Wever-Croes informed.
