Portugal’s Institute of Transportation has been told that many menbers if staff must repay €2.8 million in illegal salary supplements.
An audit by the General Inspectorate of Finance concluded that the salary supplement paid over the last six years to staff at the Instituto da Mobilidade e dos Transportes Terrestres (IMTT) had absolutely no legal basis and it must be returned.
The Institute's 300 employees have now been notified that the state would like the money back, in total around €2.8 million - an average of €9,300 each.
An audit found that the salary supplement paid to employees who performed inspections such as driving tests or car inspections, was illegal, and had been since 2007 when a restructuring closed the Direcção-Geral de Viação and transferred employees to the IMTT.
The 300 employees were integrated into the new structure but kept their old supplementary payments that had been widespread since 1987. For most workers this supplement was worth between €100 and €200 a month, but some of the top brass were benefitting by up to €800 a month.
In July 2012 the General Inspectorate of Finance concluded that the overspend at that date was €2.794 million but this will now be higher as the supplement continued to be paid until November 2013.
Only in October last year after pressure from the General Inspectorate did the IMTT inform its workers that the supplement would not be paid the following month, but assured them that overpayments would not have to be repaid by the recipients.
The 300 employees that now are receiving letters demanding the return of these illegal payments have 10 days in which to contest the demand but have little hope of successfully defending their positions. If employees are unable to pay, or unable to come to an arrangement to pay over time, the state will have to take coercive action against its own employees to recover the debt.
The Government is currently conducting a survey of all ‘salary supplements’ that were common in the Civil Service.
