When you look at the number of COVID-19 cases in Singapore, the numbers are a little concerning.
According to MOH, we still have around 6,106 active cases as of 25 June and a total of 26 deaths since the pandemic began.
So while it may be phase two now, be sure to still stay safe.
But if we take a look at a particular country far away from Singapore, the numbers are even scarier.
Yes, the US where they have, as of the time of writing, over 2.4 million people infected and over 125,000 deaths.
However, what shook the world (or cracked some people up) isn’t an increase of 3 million Covid-19 cases in a day; it’s an extremely expensive bureaucracy mistake that cost nearly $2 billion.
Cheques Sent To The Dead
According to The Straits Times, the US Treasury distributed cheques designed to help stimulate the economy devastated by Covid-19.
The Treasury began sending out the money to taxpayers in April to counter massive job losses due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Since then, they have made around 160.4 million economic impact payments worth almost S$370 billion have been made.
However, it was found out by the end of April that 1.1 million people who were supposed to receive the payments are dead.
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), payments worth around S$1.95 billion had been sent to 1.1 million dead people.
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No Clear Reason
The Treasury themselves aren’t sure as to what happened.
It also wasn’t known how many of the wrong payments were due to system errors, or fraudulent claims.
For people who have filed taxes for 2018 and 2019, as well as those on various government retirement and benefits programmes, the payment of up to S$1,670 is automatic.
Some of them “could have been deceased at the time the payments were delivered”, the US Treasury claims.
No Access To Death Records
The report also showed that unlike the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the US tax agency, the Treasury does not have access to the death records of Americans.
Which means, they won’t know who died anyway.
The GAO has now recommended that Congress give the Treasury Department access to that death data which IRS has agreed to.
So What Happens To The Money?
On 6 May, the IRS issued a statement saying payments to deceased people should be returned.
However, the GAO noted, “IRS does not currently plan to take additional steps to notify ineligible recipients on how to return payments.”
As of this writing, it is still unclear if survivors who received the checks in error are legally required to do that.
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