For poorly paid soldiers, it is the end of long years of wandering and dysfunction. The French army has acquired a new software for paying military balances, the Ministry of the Armed Forces said on Friday.
Minister Florence Parly intends to go to Rambouillet (Yvelines) on Monday to record “the transition to the new military payroll software Source Balance”, during a visit to the Joint Center for Payroll Support and Personnel Administration (CISAP).
From now on, “all the soldiers of the armed forces are paid in a completely satisfactory way”, welcomed the cabinet of the minister. “We put an end to one of the biggest industrial disasters the ministry has known in recent years. “
Up to 700 million euros undue
From 2011, under the effect of the Louvois software described today as “unstable and defective”, tens of thousands of soldiers saw their balances cut, or not paid at all, while some of them were serving in Afghanistan or Mali, leaving their families in serious difficulty.
Conversely, others received too much money which they had to reimburse. At the end of December, the total overpayment amounted to 686 million euros according to the ministry, of which 80 million had not yet been recovered.
The scandal lasted until the resumption of control of the Louvois software in 2017. “Whole battalions were mobilized to redo the calculations by hand”, argues the cabinet. The Air and Space Army as well as the military health services have just switched to the new system, after the sailors in May 2019 and the Army in May 2020.
Thousands of disputes
According to the ministry, the General Directorate of Armaments (DGA) was directly involved in the process of designing the new software, with the “same rigor as an armaments contract”. The file, in fact, is complicated: half of the soldiers see their balances vary from one month to another.
Deployment was delayed following the government’s adoption of withholding tax payment.
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The new tool makes it possible to turn the page on an episode as sensitive as it is expensive. More than 10,000 disputes have in fact been lodged with the Military Appeals Commission, of which 1,815 have been brought before the administrative tribunal. According to the Hôtel de Brienne, the cost of the dysfunction for the ministry was estimated at 283 million euros between 2013 and 2019.
From now on, the file does not inspire any more concern. “We have moved into the 21st century, everything is dematerialized”, welcomed the entourage of the minister, also referring to the ongoing modernization of the salary policy and the simplification of the methods of calculating the balances.
Original article by : www.leparisien.fr
