Home Affairs (BIZA) Minister Marinus Bee recently announced that the Personnel Act would be revised thoroughly because the government regularly loses battles in court as a result of procedural mistakes. He pointed out that tackling the unjust payment of ghost employees is much more complicated than people assume. Although the ghost employee phenomenon popped up a long time ago, tackling this issue is evidently an uphill battle as it is legally impossible to freeze their salaries or fire them. Minister Bee explained that the problem not only lies with the ghost employees but also with the manner in which the government carries out its own procedures. “If the government does not follow the right procedures to freeze their salaries or fire them, they drag the government to court”, said Minister Bee who added that the government often loses these battles in court because of the mistakes that are made. While the government tries to cut back on its expenditures, the ghost workers keep on getting their salaries due to the failure to follow the procedures in the right manner. Meanwhile the Ministry of Home Affairs has put together several committees to take a closer look at the Personnel Act so that it could be updated. The main objective is to fine-tune the rules and to close all of the legal loopholes so that the legal procedures could become airtight. Minister Bee made it clear that “this is not a swift operation” as a thorough analysis is needed to determine the size and composition of the government’s workforce. Researchers will also be deployed to study the government’s workforce because the government wants to determine how many state employees are actually needed to make its departments function effectively.

“We must find out how many people we actually need. We currently pay thousands of people but it is still unclear how many people the government could operate”, said Minister Bee.