The General Old Age Pensions Act (AOW) entered into force on May 31, 1956. Not only for residents of the Netherlands, but for all residents of the State, or the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Dennis Belfor tells RTL Nieuws, after previous reports from OneWorld. “And the Statute for the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1954 states that this included not only the Netherlands, but also Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles, among others.”
As coordinator of the HOOB (The Overarching Body for the Prevention of AOW-gap for Surinamese (ex) residents), Belfor is committed to closing the AOW-gap. “Until Suriname became independent in 1975, Surinamese Dutch were also entitled to AOW pension entitlement. And they never got it.”
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According to Belfor, the fact that not all Surinamese-Dutch elderly people receive the full 100 percent state pension is due to ‘a wry and wrong interpretation of the law’. When you live outside the Netherlands for more than a year, you build up less AOW, 2 percent less per year to be precise.
This rule is also applied to Dutch residents of Surinamese origin. As a result, they only started building AOW when they moved to the Netherlands and did not build up AOW at all if they stayed in Suriname. While that country was still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands until independence in 1975.
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What is the AOW?
The General Old Age Pensions Act (AOW) regulates the basic pension that you as a Dutch citizen receive when you have reached retirement age.
In 50 years, you will build up a full state pension, which you will receive from the moment you reach retirement age (currently at age 67). The monthly benefit is around 1200 euros for a single person; 800 euros if you are married or live together.
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For Belfor’s 89-year-old aunt, who came to the Netherlands in 1971, the AOW gap means that she only gets 47 percent AOW: less than 600 euros per month.
Self responsible
The Dutch government sees no possibility of giving her and the tens of thousands of other victims of a full AOW pension through a special scheme. “In the period up to the independence of Suriname, only a resident of the European part of the Kingdom built up AOW pension”, the then State Secretary of Social Affairs Jetta Klijnsma wrote to the House of Representatives in 2017.
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Not legally, but politically
Is the group of Surinam-Dutch elderly entitled to (extra) AOW? Arjen van Rijn, professor by special appointment of constitutional law and political renewal at the University of Curaçao, is brief about it. “No, because it was not a Kingdom affair,” he told RTL News.
Van Rijn continues: “Article 3 of the Statute contains subjects of common interest, which are matters such as external relations and defense.”
Social and economic affairs were an autonomous affair of the countries in the Empire, according to Van Rijn. “Unless special arrangements have been made for the group.” And that is something Van Rijn does not assume.
He explains that according to him there is ‘no legal reason’ for the Dutch government to still pay the AOW. “A compensation scheme would be purely a political decision.”
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That does not prevent Belfor from arguing from HOOB for the payment of accrued state pension rights for Surinamese-Dutch elderly people who lived in Suriname between 1956 and 1975. Both those who still live there and the group that moved to the Netherlands at some point.
Wrange interpretation of the law
At the beginning of the year, HOOB submitted a petition to the House of Representatives for this. A separate consultation on the AOW gap was planned for April, but this was canceled due to the corona crisis.
Belfor does notice that there is now political goodwill to tackle it. “Although it should not depend solely on that. If one applies what is stated in the law, it is not an unjustified claim of rights. This is institutional discrimination, due to wrong and wry interpretation of the law. There is inequality, there is that discrepancy. “
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Political responses
“We went into it and have a lot of questions,” VVD MP Roald van der Linde told RTL Nieuws. “Apparently, an agreement was made with regard to AOW obligations with the independence of Suriname, but a group has been left out of the picture. That is why we first want a consultation to clarify this.”
“As far as we are concerned, the AOW gap must be resolved,” says Corrie Brenk of 50PLUS. “We have asked the minister to find a solution to this.”
DENK also wants the gap to be closed. “We have been trying to repair this injustice since 2015,” said MP Tunahan Kuzu. “It is strange that since independence this group of people has been excluded from these kinds of facilities overnight.”
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