Farmers in Thanh Hoa Province are complaining that they have to give local state officials a part of the support money after their shrimp farms were destroyed in a 2017 flood.

Many shrimp farms are damaged by floods in Thanh Hoa Province in 2017

Hoang Phong communal authorities started giving subsidies to farmers from January 31. About 218 households in Hoang Phong who had their farms damaged or destroyed in 2017 would receive support from the government this time. Thanh Hoa provincial authorities spent nearly VND1.2bn (USD52,700) to pay 70% of the money to the farmers.

According to the households in Hoang Phong Commune, the officials take 15% of the total money. A local said, "When I came to receive VND17m (USD746), they had already deducted VND2m for travel and paper work."

Another local said they lost 1.7 hectares of shrimp farms that were worth billions of VND. But they are only provided with VND5m (USD220) and the officials still took 15% of the money. Those given more than VND1m had deductions of 15% and 10% for those receiving less than VND1m.

Chairman of Hoang Phong Commune People's Committee, Le Duc Tho denied the accusation, saying that the farmers wanted to give money to the team but they were refused. "Some people gave away VND50,000 (USD2.20) or VND100,000. But the majority of the farmers didn't do that," he said.

After being questioned, he later admitted that the officials did steal the money from farmers.

He said, "The team admitted to me that they took VND21m (USD922) from 100 households. I've asked them to return the money."

Le Huy Cuong, head of Hoang Hoa District Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said, "This was wrong and we demanded the communal authorities return the money. We'll decide on the punishment and solutions to this problem."

Dtinews