WILLEMSTAD - The Multidisciplinary Team will no longer appear unannounced on construction sites. Inspections are reported in advance. This is reported by the Ministry of Finance following the recent inspection at Sandals Royal Resort.
The way in which that check took place was criticized. This would be an unnecessary display of power. In addition, the construction work was halted for half a day due to the inspection. The sector believes that the interests of construction companies are not taken into account enough, which creates an incorrect image of contractors and illegal practices.
That is why project developers receive an announcement in advance. Although they do not get to know the exact date of the inspection. This advance notice should ensure that the checks can take place in a normal and orderly manner, according to the Ministry of Finance.
The unannounced visits to construction sites by the Multidisciplinary Team have been taking place for years and are therefore not exactly new. These so-called on-site observations (WTPs) are also set up at business owners and locations in all kinds of other sectors, the ministry says.
A Wtp is a direct observation at a location or at a taxpayer with the aim of collecting facts in a structured manner. No distinction is made in the type or size of the company.
In order to provide more clarity about the WTPs on construction sites, the project developer of a construction site will in future receive an announcement in advance from the Tax Accountants Bureau.
This announcement states that there are plans to visit the construction site, states the objective of the Wtp and requests that you cooperate with the inspection.
After all, the checks on construction sites will continue unabated because several Wtp's at a number of construction sites have shown that on average 30 percent of the employees present do not have the required documents or are not registered with the Social Insurance Bank.
Also at Sandals there were construction workers who did not have the correct documents. Seventeen men of different nationalities were arrested because they could not produce the required documents. They came from Ecuador, Colombia, Jamaica and Venezuela. The seventeen were arrested and taken to the Immigration Department. In the end, it turned out that five of the seventeen had no documents at all.