Parents who were wrongly labeled as fraudsters in the benefits affair have told their story in the Lower House for the first time. This took place in a round table discussion, in which MPs were allowed to ask questions to the parents. In recent years there has already been a lot of contact between MPs and victims, but they were given the floor for the first time in an official meeting in parliament.
They sketched a picture of parents who are still deeply in trouble and said that a lot goes wrong when dealing with the claim. It takes too long, and they are in danger of being crushed again by the rules.
Many victims made it clear that they had lost confidence in the government because of the affair. They often had to fight for years to get justice. “Only after six years was there a response to my objection,” said Jacqueline Massop.
Work is now being done on compensation for the tens of thousands of victims, but they consider the recognition that they are not fraudsters just as important, it turned out in the conversation. The affair had a major impact on the personal lives of those involved. According to them, there are still victims who do not dare to report out of shame.
“We were treated in an un-Dutch way”, said Marcel Moes, who suddenly had to repay all the allowances he had received. “You just had to pay, no discussion possible.”
Second nationality
It is also still not clear to many parents why they ended up on a black list by the tax authorities. Nazmiye Yigit Karaduman is convinced that her Turkish surname and second nationality have played a role. They were ‘risk factors’ that the tax authorities worked with. “If one of those factors applied to you, it was bingo.”
Yigit Karaduman has also lost her trust in the government as a result. “Until this file I felt like a proud Dutchman. It was the first time that I felt discriminated against in the Netherlands, and that was by the government.” She also has no confidence in the way in which the damage is now being handled and is concerned that discrimination by the government continues.
All victims are entitled to at least 30,000 euros from the so-called Catshuis scheme. People who have more damage can go to a commission that calculates the actual damage. Many parents pointed out that due to the large number of cases, a ‘bottleneck’ has now arisen at that committee, which means that the settlement will take a very long time. “And that’s where the most complex cases also end up,” said Massop.
But according to the parents, it is still not clear who has been duped. Lately, thousands of people have been unfairly rejected again, according to the parents, because it cannot be directly proven that they actually received childcare allowance. “The bailiffs are at the door again”, Michelle Brouns told the MPs.
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