Everything About the Under-Compensation of 3,000 Civil Servants That Took 2 Years to Check

Human error. Defined as an individual’s mistake and not on the failure of a machine. Pretty self-explanatory in its own right.

In addition, human error can prove pretty costly. So costly, in fact, that it could rack up figures in the millions…

With the Public Service Division being the latest ‘victim’ to pick up the pieces.

Everything About the Under-Compensation of 3,000 Civil Servants That Took 2 Years to Check

The Public Service Division (PSD) has committed a major oversight in their human resource (HR) records.

Apparently, human error has led to the under-compensation of some 3,000 former and current civil servants – an amount that’s estimated to span S$10 million in total.

The mistake is reported to have erupted from human errors in data entry, as well as the coding of human resource and information technology payroll systems. It was only uncovered when the civil service’s IT systems were going through an upgrade.

The revelation was unveiled by PSD today (18 November).

The division added that the IT systems were not sufficiently equipped to notice such errors, and has since expressed its sincere apologies for the mistakes.

Once the errors were discovered, PSD worked on tracing and validating the source of the specific errors in the IT systems.

They also worked with agencies across the Civil Service to check through some 102,000 current and past records, which date back to the 1990s, and undertook additional checks and re-computations of benefits.

Through the extensive process, which took more than two years, about 3,000 former and currently serving officers in the Civil Service were found to have been under-compensated as a result of the errors.

This is about 2% of the civil servants in service over the past two decades.

According to reports, the errors have served to compromise the records of full-time National Service (NS) performed by male civil servants.

Due to the inaccuracies, the “fitness cut” period, which allows eligible physically fit male enlistees to enjoy a shorter NS stint than their peers, was unwittingly ousted from the HR records of some male civil servants.

Of the 1,400 civil servants affected, most incurred a shortfall of one or two months in the recorded period of their full-time NS.

In addition, wages for those on service injury leave have also been compromised.

Meanwhile, around 1,000 civil servants had their medical leave wages tabulated using their gross monthly salaries instead of their average monthly salaries.

Mistakes in Central Provident Fund (CPF) rates also led to some civil servants refunding an unnecessary amount of their employer’s CPF contributions.

500 or so civil servants, who were affected, will be returned the excess sum.

Rectification

According to TODAYonline, under-compensated civil servants are set to receive updates from their HR departments sometime between this month and March next year.

The shortfalls will be rectified from now till mid-2021.

Meanwhile, those who are no longer in the civil service will receive notifications via registered mail, phone calls or home visits, from now to March 2021.

PSD said, “As we will be proactively reaching out to all individuals who have been under-compensated, we would like to assure both in-service and ex-public officers that there is no need to rush to contact us.”

Though with that said, civil servants may choose to get in touch with the HR departments of the sectors they are or were working at, if they have any queries.

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