Pension fund chairman Harald Linkels. Photo Caribisch Netwerk / Janita Monna
“Embezzlement? I absolutely do not recognize that”
KRALENDIJK – “Embezzlement? I absolutely do not recognize that. If the situation was really as bad as 50Plus pretends, I would have expected protesting people in front of our office,” Harald Linkels, chairman of the Foundation Pension Fund Caribbean Netherlands (PCN) told Janita Monna of Caribisch Netwerk.
During the past week, PCN was in the news in the Netherlands in a negative way. Civil servants in Bonaire, Saba and Statia are members of this pension fund. Jan Nagel, a senator for the seniors’ party 50Plus sounded the alarm: “Millions in pensions have disappeared.” Around 300 civil servants allegedly lost the pension that they built up since 10-10-10. “Embezzlement,” Nagel said.
PCN distances itself from that remark, though the pension fund acknowledges that there are problems with several hundreds of dossiers. “But the seriousness of these problems varies wildly. Sometimes a date of birth is not correct, or somebody appears to have started working in March while he was only registered at the pension fund in June. And there are a couple of extreme cases whereby someone lost a couple of pension years,” Linkels says.
The problems arose on 10-10-10 when the responsibility for the pensions of civil servants on the three islands was transferred from the general pension fund for the Netherlands Antilles (Apna) to PCN.
Pension fund acknowledges problems with dossiers
