Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has warned eight chairmen of provincial people’s committees over making inaccurate reports on the consequences of natural disaster in 2009 in order to line their own pockets or squander much needed funding.
Storm No. 11 caused huge damage in the central region in 2009
On February 29, the PM requested the chairmen of people’s committees in Ha Giang, Lai Chau, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Phu Yen, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, and Binh Dinh to strictly review their behaviour in order to prevent the same incidents occurring again.
According to Dung, in 2009, the Government used the state budget to support localities recovering from the aftermath of natural disasters and epidemics, but a lot of the funding was squandered or misused.
While Quang Nam, Binh Dinh and Quang Ngai provinces reported a total of 185,900 houses destroyed in the storms No. 9 and No. 11 during the year, in reality, only 18,718 had been damaged.
Lai Chau Province reported that storms had caused damage worth nearly VND5.5 billion (USD263,788) in Phong Tho District, but the losses only amounted to over VND900 million (USD43,165).
Thanh Hoa Province asked for a funding of nearly VND100 billion (USD4.79 million) to dredge local canals as drought prevention work in 2009, yet the work cost only VND12 billion (USD575,539).
Even though the Government had allocated funding to the localities, but several provinces including Quang Nam and Phu Yen had yet to use the allocated money.
Quang Nam received VND170 billion (USD8.15 million) of VND500 billion (USD24 million)in funding to overcome the aftermath of Storm No. 9 in 2009. By September 2010,VND8.1 billion (USD388,489) remained unused.
Phu Yen also reported a surplus of VND8.6 billion (USD412,470) even though they had VND170 billion (USD8.15 million) of a requested VND450 billion (USD21.58 million).
Some localities had invented the names of people benefiting from Government’s support in foot-and-mouth and bird flu epidemics in 2009 to get higher funding than they needed.
Nghe An Province received VND2.1 billion (USD100,719) from such false statements, and Quang Nam, VND4.3 billion (USD206,235).
Several localities had asked for urgent support but did not allocate the received funding to the needy immediately following receipt of the money, while others used the funding on other things.
Phu Yen has yet to allocate VND5 billion (USD239,808) to the needy and Quang Nam, VND8.1 billion (USD388,489).
Ha Giang, Lai Chau, Nghe An, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, Binh Dinh and Phu Yen were found to have misused nearly VND116 billion (USD5.56 million).
Disbursement of the allocated funding in these provinces remained very low, at round 55.38% as of June 30, 2010.
The PM requested that the chairmen of these eight provinces instruct those individuals and organisations involved in the fraud and incompetence to clarify their responsibilities, correct their mistakes and speed up projects to deal with the consequences of the natural disasters.
Any funding that had been squandered or misused must be returned to the state budget, he noted.
He emphasised the necessity of drawing out standards to calculate the losses caused by epidemics and natural disasters with the oversight of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in order prevent possible misconducts in the future.