During the General Members’ Meeting (GMM), Joyce de Vlugt, chairman of the Customs Union, stated that a working group will be installed to amend the draft law Tax Authority Suriname. De Vlugt, mentioned that the law has been reserved for the time being, because experts are working with experts within the working group to convince the committees that the law has not been worked out properly. In the meantime, there have been discussions with Minister Albert Ramdin of Foreign Affairs (BuZa) and the DNA Committee of Rapporteurs. Ramdin said that fundamental adjustments to the law will still be made.
Lawyer Serena Essed, meanwhile, has stated in conversation with a local medium that such unions are involved in this matter and therefore the minister will install that working group to consider the law. Essed said that the opinion honored by the minister is experienced as very positive. The purpose of the working group is twofold, namely it will assess the draft law, but also make recommendations regarding the law. According to Essed, as many solutions as possible will be devised and all stakeholders will make an effort to indicate as well as possible what the assessments are of the law, so that the working group can ultimately arrive at an acceptable end result.
Essed said that a hot topic is that the staff would lose their position as servants of the country, would subsequently become ordinary employees and a collective labor agreement would be drawn up. But what the content, the terms of employment and what would happen to the accrued rights of the collective labor agreement was not mentioned anywhere in the draft law, which left the country officials in an uncertain position.
