Checks on sick pay exports are inadequate, fraud is widespread: Nieuwsuur

Photo: UWV
Photo: UWV

Health checks on migrant EU workers who have returned to the Netherlands but are claiming Dutch sick pay are inadequate, according to an investigation by current affairs programme Nieuwsuur.

Last year 1,600 people living in Poland received sick pay from the Netherlands, as did 150 Romanian nationals and 30 people from Bulgaria. However a large number of the claims are ‘dubious’, employment agencies, legal advisors and sources at the UVW job centre told the programme.

Sick pay – which amounts to between 70% and 90% of salary – can be paid out in other EU countries, as long as the UWV is informed.

Polish national Mikolaj Zajac, whose company checks the claims of Polish workers, told the broadcaster that he regularly comes across cases of fraud. ‘We have found lorry drivers hired in Germany who go back to Poland because they are ill, but are still working as drivers there,’ he said.

He said 30% of the reports of sickness which he looks into are ‘dubious’.

The UWV said in a statement that only a very small proportion of the hundreds of thousands of sick pay claims made every year go abroad and that both the Dutch and labour migrants attempt to commit fraud.

‘In 2018, the UWV received 23,000 reports of fraud on 1.2 million benefit claims and 13,000 cases were substantiated,’ the agency said. ‘This includes all types of benefit, including sick pay and invalidity benefit.’

In addition, the statement said, the agency blocks some 40% of claims made from Poland and almost 50% of claims made from Bulgaria and Romania. By contrast, just 17% of claims made in the Netherlands are rejected.

Native Dutch

The programme did not look at what proportion of foreign workers claim sick pay when compared to the native Dutch. However, figures from national statistics agency CBS show that despite having jobs and working long hours, Polish nationals earn on average a third less than the Dutch and 17% live in poverty.

In 2017, just 1.8% were claiming welfare benefits, compared with 2.6% of the Dutch population as a whole.

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