Centre-Right Dutch Government Resigns ‘En Mass’ Over Childcare Aid Scandal

By Tony Winterburn • Published: 15 Jan 2021 • 14:05

Centre-Right Dutch Government Resigns 'En Mass' Over Childcare Aid Scandal. image: Pixabay

Centre-Right Dutch Government Resigns ‘En Mass’ Over Childcare Aid Scandal.

The centre-right government of the Netherlands resigned this Friday over the scandal over family allowances for childcare outside the home. The fiasco has been brewing since 2014 and has not only revealed the failures of the Tax Service. Some 26,000 parents have been victims of the extreme harshness of an aid social security system that, in a possible fraud, incurred discrimination when investigating them, especially based on their origin, since most were parents of Turkish or Moroccan descent.

Suspicions of large-scale fraud by these families have been proven unfounded, but the apologies offered by the Executive and the rigours of the pandemic have not prevented their fall due to the evidence that the parents got into debt and sometimes lost their homes and jobs. They (the parents) also had to endure the social stigma of being singled out for a ‘crime’ they had not committed.

The team of Liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte, 53, who has headed three Cabinets since 2010, has acknowledged that they all erred: the Ministries of Social Affairs, Finance and Economy, judges and officials. The blow to the image of a country that prides itself on fighting inequality is enormous, and with the next elections scheduled for March, the decision to resign en bloc has avoided infighting. The management of the pandemic will not suffer the consequences of the political collapse, and Rutte will explain shortly how they will continue to deal with it in the course of a press conference.

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