Some 4,500 police workers call in sick daily

Seven percent of police personnel stayed home sick on an average day in 2015, according to figures from the police's central works council. That comes down to between 4,500 and 4,600 police employees sick per day, ANP reports.

The average sick absenteeism in the Netherlands is less than 4 percent. At the police it was 6.1 percent in 2014.

The central works council believes that the large number of sick police employees can mostly be attributed to stress and uncertainty caused by the reorganization of the National Police.

"In some cases this entails people being transferred to completely different places", a spokesperson said to the news wire. "Colleagues who until recently cycled to work every morning, ended up in places more than 100 kilometers away. The stress and uncertainty entailed in this process caused a lot of damage."

The council wants the new police chief Erik Akerboom, who started this week, to launch an independent investigation into the sick leave problem. They also want the corps leadership to start working on reducing absenteeism as soon as possible. "There needs to be good conversations between boss and workers to repair the relationships and confidence."