The Hanoi People’s Committee has opted to give VNĐ120 billion (US$5.3 million) as payment for 3,700 irrigation workers in Hanoi who did not receive their full salary over the past five months.

Speaking on the late salary, Chu Phu My, director of the Hanoi Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, told the Lao Động (Labour) newspaper that the failure to pay salary was due to an array of causes.

First, the municipal people’s committee realised that expenses for irrigation fees in Hanoi in 2014 were more than VNĐ700 billion ($31.1 million), much higher than neighbouring provinces with the same agricultural land areas.

Therefore, last year, the municipal people’s committee asked the State Audit Office of Việt Nam to check the expenditure of all five irrigation enterprises in the capital.

Based on the study’s results, the Hanoi People’s Committee decided last year’s irrigational fees would equal 40 per cent of the 2014 metric. As a result, workers temporarily did not receive salary.

Secondly, said director Mỹ, concerned departments have been confused by the Ministry of Finance’s Circular 280.

City authorities were not sure whether the circular provided that fees for irrigational services are to be paid by the users or from the State budget.

As many as 3,700 workers of irrigation enterprises in Hanoi received nothing, or only half of their monthly salary, during the past five months.

Nguyen Ngoc Hoang, a worker at the Phuc Tho Irrigation Enterprise,  is the breadwinner for his sick mother and his small children, but he has not received any salary since August last year. Before then, he and other workers of the enterprise only received 80 per cent of their monthly salary.

“I’ve been borrowing money everywhere, but it’s still not enough to cover hospital expenses for my ill mother,” he said.

Many other enterprise workers are poor, and the owed salary to some workers has reached over VNĐ50 million (US$2,200).

Nearly 800 workers at the Tích River Irrigation Investment and Development Enterprise face the same predicament.

Hà, one of the company’s workers, said that his salary, bonuses and other social welfare benefits were cut since November last year.

Workers of the Nhue River Irrigation Enterprise received only half of their monthly salary from August to December last year. And since the beginning of this year they have not received any money at all. 

VNS