WILLEMSTAD - A group of refinery employees have presented an action plan which should resolve the economic crisis in Curaçao. The objective is for the island to run its own refinery but for this, the organization wants to see changes.

One of the changes is for Prime Minister has Eugene Rhuggenaath to give back the refinery portfolio to the Minister of Economic Development Dr. Steven Martina. They also want the prime minister to resign since he has failed with one of his main objectives, which is to find a new operator for the refinery and save as many jobs as possible.

The group also want parliament to adopt a vote of no confidence against Prime Minister Rhuggenath for consecutively devaluing the refinery to junk status since August 2018. Parliament must form a new government under guidance of a new Prime Minister with full competence in economic crisis management.

The refinery is to be reactivated at once. The group wants the Curaçao Refinery (RdK) to sign a processing agreement with GeoPetroleum N.V. based on its offer from August 2018 to Minister Dr. Martina being willing and able to organize the most important preconditions (feed-stock and financial backing) to run the ISLA refinery.

Latest after 3 months running the ISLA refinery successfully, the group demands to take over also the full operations of ISLA (workers takeover) to avoid any further political and structural mismanagement in the future. “The workers takeover via IMOC N.V. is the only sustaining solution for turning the Curacao economic crisis by keeping the margins for its own,” says the group in their action plan.

The refinery is the main asset to solve the economic crisis. “We, the refinery workers in total and all our colleagues in the additional services can help Curaçao rise from this economic woe. In this consciousness we demand clarity, solidarity, and full authority for our capacity being the only ones saving our future, our autonomy and wealth.”