Wiesbaden (dpa / lhe) – Police officers in Hesse have accumulated a huge mountain of overtime. In the years 2020 and 2021, the civil servants accumulated a total of around 1.46 million hours that could not be compensated for by free time, said Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) in response to a small request from the SPD parliamentary group in Wiesbaden. As of March 31 this year, the hourly accounts of the Hessian police officers had shown a total of almost 3.06 million hours.
If overtime for official reasons cannot primarily be compensated for with free time, this will be compensated financially within the framework of the police overtime remuneration ordinance, explained the Minister of the Interior. In 2019 and 2020 alone, the state provided police employees with around 15 million euros for an average of around 700,000 overtime hours to compensate for overtime that could be paid out.
As part of the payment date for overtime with the salary for July 2021, a payment of around 8.4 million euros was made, reported Beuth. Around 382,000 hours of overtime were thus remunerated. With the payments for December 2021, there was a payment of around 7.6 million euros. Around 339,000 hours of overtime were thus remunerated.
The state government had already made simplified payment options possible for police officers in 2016 with the creation of an independent overtime remuneration ordinance, the interior minister announced. Since then, many more hours have become payable, which could be paid out through the funds provided annually.
