Today’s story that hundreds or even thousands of civil servants and teachers in Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba (the BES islands) have lost up to 15 pension years is downright unbelievable.
Their premiums paid up to 10-10-10, when the three territories became special overseas public entities of the Netherlands, seem to have disappeared.
Dutch senior citizen party 50PLUS is understandably upset and has asked questions via its member in the First Chamber of Parliament in The Hague. The problem obviously goes back to the dismantling of the former Netherlands Antilles per 10-10-10, when it was agreed that the General Antillean Pension Fund APNA’s obligations would be taken over by the new countries Curaçao and St. Maarten plus the Netherlands on behalf of the BES islands.
The latter thus became the responsibility of the new Pension Fund Caribbean Netherlands PCN. However, its first overviews after 2010 showed the prior pension rights of several hundred public sector employees were missing, even though they had duly paid their contributions and had salary slips to prove it.
PCN says these persons apparently had not been in the APNA administration for some reason, so no money for them was ever received as part of the constitutional reforms. At the same time, it’s recognised that the premiums were in fact deducted from their pay.
As 50PLUS correctly pointed out, that’s just not good enough. The Kingdom of the Netherlands is still a constitutional state governed by the rule of law and somebody will have to carry some responsibility for this obvious fiasco.
If indeed fraud was committed, those involved must be held accountable, but – more important – this should not end up being at the expense of people who served their community under the impression their pension rights were guaranteed.
