Overpaid superannuitants have $3.8m in debts wiped

WELLINGTON: Thousands of superannuitants who were incorrectly overpaid $3.8 million in superannuation have had their debts wiped.

A total of 7659 such ‘‘overpayment debts’’ were written off by the Government between 2013 and 2017, according to information released under the Official Information Act.

The highest individual debt the Ministry of Social Develop ment decided to waive was

$43,301 in 2016.

The average amount of the debts written off was between $344 and $655.

Pension debts can only be written off in select circumstances, such as when the overpayment was caused by a staff error as well as whether the person had already spent the money.

Ministry of Social Development spokeswoman Dwina Dick inson said with more than five million payments a year some mistakes were inevitable.

‘‘We are always concerned when an overpayment occurs because we’ve done something wrong — that’s not the quality of service we want to provide to our clients,’’ she said yesterday.

‘‘When we see that we’ve made an error that’s resulted in an overpayment we own up to that and seek to make it right for the client as quickly as we can.’’

Ms Dickinson said the ministry had not recorded how many superannuitants were affected by the overpayments.

Last year was the busiest year for overpayments, with 3196 debts being wiped, in part, because ministry staff failed to take into account the extra superannuation payment 1100 people received from the Netherlands pension system. — NZN