“Surinamese Dutch Elderly to Receive One-Time Compensation for State Pension Shortfall”

A group of elderly Surinamese Dutch people will receive a one-off amount of 5,000 euros to compensate for their state pension shortfall. The cabinet wants to make a “gesture of recognition because of the suffering and injustice that this group experiences”, so late Minister Carola Schouten for Poverty Policy, Participation and Pensions know. In April it was already clear that there would be compensation.

It concerns more than 30,000 elderly people who moved to the Netherlands before the independence of Suriname in 1975. They thought that they had already started building up their state pension in Suriname. Suriname then belonged to the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

They later found out that they had only started building up their state pension in the Netherlands. An old-age pension gap had arisen and that was perceived as very unjust.

For years, the elderly have been trying to get compensation for the state pension gap. In 2018, for example, an interest group raised the issue. A report followed in 2021 in which the Minister of Social Affairs and Employment “embraced” an advice to close the state pension gap. Nevertheless, the Council of State advised later that year that the elderly could not claim compensation.

Minister Schouten has been asked several times in the House of Representatives to find a solution and to talk to the Surinamese Dutch. “They feel like second-class citizens, while they came to the Netherlands precisely because they wanted to remain Dutch,” says Schouten now. “They have been asking for attention for their situation for a long time and it has taken them a long time to be heard.”

The amount of 5000 euros will be transferred automatically. It concerns the group of Surinamese who went to live in the Netherlands no later than November 25, 1975 and were older than 18 years at the time. They must have lived in the Netherlands for at least 25 years to be eligible for the amount, the ministry said.