Minister of Social Affairs, Wouter Koolmees, disputes the view that there is hardly any control over the provision of sickness benefits. “The UWV pays explicit attention to this,” he writes in a letter to the House of Representatives. In it he responds to the investigation of News hour to sickness fraud by migrant workers.
We announced last week that Polish labor migrants are wrongfully in sickness legislation. They report sick in the Netherlands, receive benefits and are then simply working in their home country. Tell employment agencies, legal advisers and sources at the UWV benefits agency News hour about these dubious cases.
According to the minister, the fraud can be “not fully prevented or detected”, but the UWV checks “in various ways and times” whether reporting sick, and thus also providing the benefit, is justified. In the letter to parliament, he outlines the control procedure, but does not make a statement about the amount of controls.
Help from Eastern European doctors
Koolmees says that a doctor’s statement (from abroad) does not play a decisive role in the granting of sickness benefit. News hour denounced the reliability of such statements, as it appears that Eastern European doctors issue disease statements to people who are not sick at all.
To investigate how easy it is to get into sickness benefits, we put it to the test in Poland with a hidden camera:
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Healthy in the sickness law? It’s that easy
–The minister writes that applicants from Poland often send a doctor’s statement themselves, but that the UWV sees such a document only as additional information. According to Koolmees, the UWV obtains more information, for example by calling the applicant for sickness benefits.
Although the doctor’s statement is not the decisive factor in the decision, it is an important element in the story of the beneficiary. If a doctor in Poland officially declares someone sick, the UWV must consider this statement and take it into account when granting the benefit.
Practice also shows that telephone contact with beneficiaries can be difficult: people sometimes do not leave a telephone number. That is not mandatory. The UWV can then contact you by letter, but that takes much longer. And meanwhile the benefit continues.
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Also concerns within UWV
Great Tit points out that the number of benefits to Poland is low. According to the UWV, a total of 1,814 sickness benefits were paid to benefit recipients in Poland, Bulgaria and Romania in 2019. He also indicates that in 2019 40 percent of all applications from Poland were rejected.
He does not seem to want to put the problem too big. Nevertheless, conversations show that News hour has argued with sources from various quarters that concerns about fraud are widespread. There are also concerns within the UWV, according to internal documents held by News hour.
UWV employees indicate that they see suspicious reports about pregnancies, cannot reach recipients of benefits and see that some migrant workers work in the Netherlands for a short time, after which they end up with serious complaints in the Sickness Benefits Act.
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Checks in Poland
In the letter to parliament, Koolmees also discusses the inspections by the Polish sister organization (ZUS). According to the minister, there is “a good working relationship” between the two agencies, although he does not write exactly what that means. It is also not clear how many checks the ZUS carries out and how often fraud is detected.
According to the Polish absenteeism expert Mikolaj Zajac, the ZUS is already struggling to check sickness reports in its own country. “Every year 20 million Polish workers report sick. And only 500,000 reports are checked,” he said earlier News hour. As a result, the agency is unlikely to receive audit requests from abroad.
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