On Wednesday July 8th, 2020, the Minister of Justice Anna E. Richardson received a presentation via Zoom from the consultancy firm Balance, which was contracted by former Minister of Justice Van Hugh Cornelius De Weever, to prepare the function books for the employees of the Ministry of Justice of Sint Maarten.
Minister Richardson requested a presentation from the consultancy firm to gain an overview of the work performed thus far. Mr. Martin van den Blink of Balance provided a status report and advised the Minister of the next steps in order to complete the function books.
The process to have the function books completed before ratification involves a three-step process, beginning with the first phase, which is the job descriptions according to the list of functions in the function book. The first phase, which took approximately one year, has been completed.
The second phase, the evaluating of job descriptions with the assigned salary scale will be done by a workgroup comprising of persons from the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of General Affairs. In this phase, the Evaluation Committee is comprised of Balance Consultancy and trained staff in the Fuwawys/FuwaSXM from both the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of General Affairs. This committee is currently being formed following the meeting with Balance Consultancy. Mr. Van den Blink estimates that this process will take at least two months.
The last and final phase, phase three, is determining the number of FTE (Full-Time Equivalent) based on the amount of workload per job description. This session will be done with the input of the different department heads, and is scheduled for this month.
Finalizing the function books is amongst the top five priority items to be handled with urgency by Minister Richardson. As such, during the meeting, Minister Richardson asked for the commitment of Mr. Van den Blink of Balance Consultancy to have bi-weekly meetings where updates on the process of the function books will be shared. Pleased with the progress thus far, Mr. Van den Blink also agreed to provide the Minister with copies of the completed and signed draft job descriptions. In the next meeting with Balance Consultancy, the department heads will be invited for a direct update on the function books to which they will update their direct staff.
Minister Richardson is eager to have the draft function books completed so that the legislative process can start and the function books can finally be ratified into law.