Thousands of pensioners have $3.8m debt wiped

A total of 7659 such "overpayment debts" were written off by the government between 2013 and 2017, according to information released under the Official Information Act. Picture / File

It has been revealed that thousands of pensioners who were incorrectly overpaid $3.8 million in superannuation have had their debts wiped off.

A total of 7659 such "overpayment debts" were written off by the government between 2013 and 2017, according to information released under the Official Information Act.

The highest individual debt the Ministry of Social Development decided to waive was $43,301 in 2016, while the average value of the debts written off was between $344 and $655.

Pension debts can only be written off in select circumstances, such as when the overpayment was caused by a staff error as well as whether the person had already spent the money and if they could afford to pay it back.

Ministry of Social Development's Dwina Dickinson says that with more five million payments a year some mistakes were inevitable.

"We are always concerned when an overpayment occurs because we've done something wrong - that's not the quality of service we want to provide to our clients," she said on Tuesday.

"When we see that we've made an error that's resulted in an overpayment we own up to that and seek to make it right for the client as quickly as we can."

Dickinson said the Ministry had not recorded how many pensioners had been affected by the overpayments but that it was likely to be similar to the total number of debts waived.

Last year was the busiest year for overpayments with 3196 debts being wiped, in part, because Ministry staff failed to take into account the extra superannuation payment that 1100 people received from the Netherlands pension system.