A mountainous commune went years without seeing any electricity bills, now the debt has caught up and they are struggling to keep the power on.
 |
| Nguyen Van Ninh, 85, was pointing at a power pole and complained |
The lives of people in Ninh Tay Commune, Khanh Hoa Province are facing a challenging dilemma as years of unpaid electricity bills have come back to haunt them.
Ninh Tay is the most disadvantaged mountainous commune in Ninh Hoa District, Khanh Hoa Province. Half of its population is ethnic people. Most of them make a living from farming so their lives are already challenging. Since 2005, they have had to try to clear electricity bills which they were not asked to pay before.
Nguyen Van Ninh, 85 complained, “Unexpectedly, we were not asked to pay electricity fees for several years. Nobody came to check how much electricity we had consumed. I’m very old and have no way to deal with these unpaid electricity bills.”
In 1998, the province had implemented a policy under which rural areas would have access to electricity. Initially, the communal authority assigned a unit in charge of collecting electricity fees. Since 2002, people in the commune did not know why nobody came to collect the fees anymore.
In 2005, Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) took responsibility of managing Khanh Hoa Province’s electricity services. EVN’s branch based in Ninh Hoa District discovered that people of Ninh Tay Commune had used electricity without any charge for 3 years. Since then, people were asked to pay all electricity fees which they used during last 3 years.
Lan, a local said, “It’s obvious we have to pay electricity fees to EVN if we use it. If they collect money monthly, we can afford to pay. But they did not come to collect the fees for 3 years, now they ask us to pay them all at one time. It’s really difficult for us.”
The People’s Committee of Ninh Tay Commune issued a policy under which those who could pay all the electricity debt or at least 50% of their debt would have power to use. Otherwise, they would have none.
Then, the local authority imposed several other policies to collect their debt. At the end of September 2006, they still were unable to pay off all the debt. The debt, which was over VND 1.1 billion ($58,000), was then transferred to EVN.
EVN decided a more appropriate policy to collect the debt was to ask people of Ninh Tay Commune to pay their debt on a monthly basis in addition to their monthly electricity fees of 2010.
Nguyen Van Ninh added, “We still owe over VND2 million ($101) in electricity fees. Our income is only VND380,000 ($19.3) per month. It’s very challenging for us to try to pay this debt.”
Huynh Van Phu, a neighbour of Ninh shared, “They collect the debt and monthly electricity fees on the 17th of each month. If I cannot manage to have enough money to pay them, power will be cut off. When I can earn enough money to pay, I have to pay another VND39,000 ($2) for the cutoff charge in addition to the debt and monthly electricity fees. Our family is living in need so our power has been cut off 3 times this year.”
Le Xuan Tuyen, vice chairman of the People’s Committee of Ninh Tay Commune said, “Locals now do not have to pay all the debt at one time. They can pay on monthly basis. The commune has a total of 1,200 families. 315 of them are living in poverty. Now their lives are really difficult because the harvest has not come yet.”
Vo Thanh Dung, manager of EVN’s branch based in Ninh Hoa District said, “It’s also a hard job for us when we come to collect the debt. This debt has caused anger to the locals. However, we have to do this according to the directions of higher level authorities. At present, people of Ninh Tay Commune owe EVN over VND422 million ($21,416).”
