$1 million is unclaimed

About $1 million of Baw Baw Shire residents’ money is sitting – unclaimed – in the State Revenue Office.

The unclaimed money is made up of share dividends, salaries and wages, rents and bonds, debentures and interest and proceeds from sales. It is passed to the SRO if unclaimed after 12 months. A Warragul woman tops the shire’s list with $21,426 waiting for her to lay claim to.

A Trafalgar woman has $13,122 to be collected and there is a man in Warragul that has $12,868 about which he is apparently unaware.

The entitlements can be as low as $20 and there are thousands of individual amounts owed to Baw Baw residents.

A Drouin man has 15 separate entitlements valued at about $900 and another in Warragul has 14 that add up to $1500.

Member for Eastern Victoria Harriet Shing said people can search at sro.vic.gov.au/unclaimed money to find out if some of their money is being held. She said there was no time limit to claim the money. In Warragul alone there are 1615 unclaimed entitlements amounting to almost $215,000.

Figures for other towns include:Drouin (988 unclaimed amounts) almost $96,000.

Trafalgar (401) $46,000.

Thorpdale (76) $14,000.

Longwarry (143) about $12,400.

Yarragon (146) $11,200.

Neerim South (94) almost $9000.

Ripplebrook (28) $7490.

Ms Shing said there could be many reasons people lose track of money they’ve earned and the government wanted those amounts returned to their owners as soon as possible.