WILLEMSTAD - In the period 2019-2020, the government paid almost 7 million guilders too much in salaries. The biggest part of these concerns payments made inappropriately in connection with overtime at 150 and 200 percent. This amounts to 5.33 million guilders. This is the conclusion of the Curaçao Court of Audit (ARC) in a report to the government's payroll administration.
It is also uncertain whether the government has correctly paid out 7.14 million guilders. The necessary underlying documents were not available for these payments. As a result, it is uncertain whether the relevant salary changes have been processed lawfully, correctly and on time, according to the ARC in the report that was sent to parliament.
Allowances
For example, four ex-employees of former ministers were wrongly paid 56,006 guilders in allowance. The allowances were not withdrawn when the ministers resigned. An employee who was appointed on March 24, 2017, and whose term of office of the minister ended on May 29, 2017, received a monthly allowance of 1,899 guilders until the end of March 2020. This allowance had to be discontinued as of May 29, 2017. This did not happen.
Two ministers also received 90,066 guilders in 2019 without a legal basis. The former national ordinance that regulated the remuneration of the ministers expired on 10 October 2010. In 2019, there was no new law for this. This only came into effect on 1 July 2021. The same applies to the bridging allowances of 293,842 guilders that were paid to the former political authorities in 2019.
Addition
The ARC estimates that since 10-10-'10 the government has paid 55 million guilders too much in salaries. The Ministry of Administration, Planning and Services (BPD) has now started to recover some of the overpaid amounts.