WILLEMSTAD – A series of court cases involving more than 15 civil servants is drawing renewed attention to a long-standing problem in Curaçao: government authorities failing to implement judgments after losing cases brought by their own employees.
The cases will come before the civil court on October 6, with the employees asking judges to impose penalty payments on the Country of Curaçao until the government complies with earlier rulings.
The unusual legal route is necessary because the Court in Civil Service Matters does not itself have the mechanism to impose such penalty payments when the government fails to act.
Consequently, an employee may win a case against the government and obtain a judgment requiring a ministry to make a decision, only to have to start another case before the civil court when that decision is not made.
The Joint Court of Justice has previously confirmed that the civil court has jurisdiction to provide this additional legal protection.
The issue goes beyond the individual employment disputes. Previous judgments have emphasized that compliance with judicial decisions by government authorities is a matter of broader public importance in a state governed by the rule of law.
Experience has also shown that financial penalties do not always solve the problem.
Background publications by members of the Joint Court have pointed to cases in which governments allowed penalty payments to accumulate to their maximum amount without subsequently carrying out the original court judgment.
One Curaçao case involved a police officer seeking a promotion. The officer initially went to the civil service court after the responsible ministry failed to decide on his request. Even after the court ordered the minister to make a decision, no action followed.
The officer was eventually forced to initiate separate civil proceedings, after which the government faced a penalty of up to XCG 25,000 if it continued to fail to comply.
The cases scheduled for October 6 indicate that the problem has not disappeared.
More than 15 civil servants are now simultaneously seeking similar intervention from the civil court because, according to their claims, the Country of Curaçao has not done what it was previously ordered to do by the civil service court.
The proceedings are scheduled to begin at 10:15 a.m. before the Court of First Instance. The cases will initially be heard jointly, with individual circumstances to be addressed separately where necessary.