University of Curaçao Suspends Students For Challenging Minister
By Curaçao Nature Conser
After three students from the University of Curacao were suspended after their internship presentation. Part of their internship at DOW, the presentation offered an alternative to the government’s current plan to demolish a protected mangrove forest for a new road.
Minister of Traffic, Transport and Spatial Planning requested an immediate personal meeting with the headmaster after learning of the presentation.
The government has responded by issuing the following statement.
However, it’s peculiar that the ministry bases their actions on article 4 LMA in the instance of students. LMA (Landsverordening Materieel Ambtenaarenrecht, is legislation applicable to civil servants (ambtenaar). Article 1 goes into detail of who exactly is considered a civil servant. Seeing that these students are interns, they can not be considered civil servants according to LMA.
This means that if you want to refer to their breach of confidentiality it will have to be based on their internship agreement or other agreement signed with the organization when they started the internship.