Thousands of British servicemen and women, including many fighting on the front line, are being underpaid because of failures in a new computerized pay system, according to a report of the Sunday Times.
Some soldiers have gone without full pay for up to five months and, with Christmas only weeks away, are being forced to turn to regiment hardship funds to cover household bills, the report said.
Special forces operating in Afghanistan and Iraq have been hit by the fiasco, the paper reported. For some officers, it is costing 580 pounds (about 1,040 U.S. dollars) a month.
This weekend, the Ministry of Defence admitted that more than 16,000 members of the forces were underpaid in August. According to the ministry, a total of 38,529 were wrongly paid between April and August.
The computer system was introduced in March last year in the Royal Navy and saw a flood of complaints form sailors not being paid their full pay. The Royal Air Force was taken on to the system in October last year, followed by the Army in April this year.
One of the key problems with the system is that it requires senior officers to log in to authorize payments, which means that if they are away on operations, the whole procedure grinds to a halt.
Two-thirds of an entire intake of officers who graduated from Sandhurst three years ago are still being paid their junior rank despite being promoted, the report said.
The chaos is such that thousands of soldiers have also been overpaid, it said, and many have spent the money unaware that they would have to repay.
Source:Xinhua
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