How Should Illegally Paid Overtime Allowances Be Recovered?

How should illegally paid overtime allowances given to 2,311 civil servants over the past five years be recovered?

Suwon City in Gyeonggi Province, facing controversy over improper payments of overtime allowances to civil servants, has stepped forward to recover illegally paid overtime allowances through its own investigation. However, the city is struggling to find an effective and appropriate investigation and recovery method.

It was revealed in a Gyeonggi Province audit conducted in October and November of last year that one to two administrative staff members in each department of Suwon City Hall falsely recorded the clock-in and clock-out times of their department's employees during the same time period (8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.) over five years from 2002, calculating an average of 54 hours of overtime work per person and illegally collecting a total of 33.337 billion won.

When this fact was disclosed through the media on the 29th of last month, civic groups in Suwon fiercely criticized Suwon City, demanding refund of the allowances and measures to prevent recurrence.

In response, Suwon City apologized for the improper operation of overtime allowances on the 30th of last month and announced it would conduct thorough investigations to recover improperly executed allowances. The city then tasked the Audit and Inspection Division with overseeing all aspects of the recovery process.

The Audit and Inspection Division first began conducting its own investigation to accurately determine whether civil servants had falsified their overtime hours as if they had performed work they did not actually do. However, it soon found itself in a dilemma.

This is because the false overtime allowances identified in the audit exceed 33.3 billion won over five years, and the number of civil servants who received illegal allowances reaches 2,311.

Furthermore, the records show that over the past five years, 8,935 person-years falsely recorded a total of 1,523,646 hours of overtime work, making it practically very difficult to determine for each individual exactly until what time they actually worked overtime.

An official from the Audit Division said, "While we are conducting our own investigation, there are so many civil servants to investigate, and we must prove from them that they did not work overtime or inflated their overtime hours. It is not easy to determine individual actual working hours."

After much deliberation, the Audit Division decided to utilize the security inspection log as an investigation tool, in which on-duty civil servants record the time each office is locked up every night.

Even if overtime work until 11:00 p.m. was recorded, if the security inspection log shows that staff members left at 10:00 p.m. and the office was closed, the division can identify illegally recorded overtime hours.

The Audit Division compared the clock-out times recorded in the security inspection log with the times recorded in the overtime work log, and instructed each department to submit explanatory documents for cases where there were discrepancies.

A city official said, "Apart from systemic issues, we will recover improperly executed overtime allowances and hold relevant personnel accountable so that citizens can understand. However, since the data is so vast and we must compare each entry, it will take considerable time before investigation results come out and actual recovery takes place."

Meanwhile, following the detection by the Gyeonggi Province audit, Suwon City changed the method of recording working hours in the overtime work log and modified its personnel management system so that each civil servant logs into their own computer to check their clock-in and clock-out times.