MSD Accused of Helping Debt Collectors Target Beneficiaries
The revelation that tens of millions are being stripped from beneficiaries through attachment orders exposes how deeply the welfare system now intersects with the debt collection industry.
$37 million drained from benefits to debt collectors in grim vortex
Thousands of welfare recipients, whose payments are docked by private debt collection companies, require additional government bailouts to make ends meet.
A mechanism called attachment orders allow creditors who employ debt collectors such as Baycorp to lodge a payment order with the Ministry of Justice. This is then enforced largely by the Ministry of Social Development, which can shave up to 40 percent off the debtor’s net benefits or wages to recoup what’s owed to the creditors.
New ministry data suggests the mechanism could be reinforcing a system of circular welfare. In February this year 24,420 Ministry of Social Development clients had attachment orders applied against their benefits; the monetary amount redirected to debt collectors amounts to $36.9 million a year.
Newsroom
Why is MSD enforcing debt collection against beneficiaries?
It is disgusting and disgraceful that the NZ State is pimping for the debt collector industry!
This despicable policy needs to be ended immediately.
The NZ State shouldn’t be acting in the interests of the blood debt collecting vultures, it should be acting in the interests of the beneficiary, and the NZ State acting as an enforcer for debt collectors is certainly NOT in the interests of the beneficiary!
The State is trapping people in a cycle of debt
This is a ludicrous situation where we are effectively subsidising the debt collectors!
It is not up to the state to facilitate payment of the debt (plus their interest rates, penalties and fees), it is up to the debt collection agency to do that, and if the beneficiary can’t pay, too bad.
This is repugnant and must be urgently changed if there is a new Government after the election.
Look, election year or not, they can’t hit their donors up for too much money (it starts to look a bit crass and vulgar after a while), so they’ve got to club the bennies until they bleed in the hope a few more pennies fall from their moth-eaten pockets. Then they can screech about getting “value for every taxpayer dollar” in the run up to an election, while continuing to sodomise the economy with a chainsaw.
An election they will (Please, God, pretty please with bells on!) lose.
In other news, it’s nice to see Nicky No-Boats addressing crushing unemployment by throwing more public servants to the wolves. We all know the best way to extinguish a raging inferno is to pour more petrol on the fire. Well done, team!
I imagine the beneficiary hating vultures who work at MSD are more than happy to spend time and money facilitating this action.
I’m sick of stupid people, especially politicians, who claim they know best while at the same time impoverishing those whom most rely on getting good information from those same stupid people who, in reality know fuck all while blaming others.
Heard of Brian Cox? He’s pretty good.
Brian Cox’s Honest Opinion Of Oppenheimer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MflmUTx0hlM
When I started watching Brian Cox I realised that almost all information we get from various sources, especially politically, was wrong at best and at worst, deliberately misleading.