Handing over rural power grid: Many problems remain

(Baonghean) - Handing over the rural low-voltage grid to the electricity sector is a major policy of the State, aiming to overcome the limitations in electricity supply, creating fairness in electricity use between rural and urban people. In recent times, the handover of the rural low-voltage grid in the province has achieved certain results, but there are still difficulties and problems that need to be focused on solving.

Maintenance and repair of the power grid system before the storm season in Thanh Chuong Photo: Thanh Chung

According to the plan, Dien Chau district will complete the handover of the rural low-voltage grid to all 100% of communes and towns in 2014. However, in reality, this goal is difficult to become a reality. As of October 16, 2014, in the district, 29 communes and towns have handed over the rural grid to the Electricity sector for management, with a total of 136/183 transformer stations. The remaining 10 communes and 2 cooperatives have not yet handed over. Dien Chau Electricity has worked with the communes and electricity service cooperatives, but has not yet reached an agreement on the handover or requested to delay the handover time. Mr. Mai Thanh Hung - Chairman of Dien Hong Agricultural Service and Electricity Cooperative said: In 1990, the Cooperative started to have electricity, at that time the people contributed 50% and the Cooperative spent 50% to build power projects from 35KV to 0.4KV. By 1997, households using electricity contributed 500,000 VND/household.

Since then, the electricity management cooperative has made a profit and used the profit to invest in upgrading the entire 0.4KV line and investing in 3 more transformer stations; 100% of the cable lines are covered. Thanks to that, the electricity quality of Dien Hong is always guaranteed. We agree with the State's policy on handing over the rural power grid to the Electricity sector. However, the investment in upgrading the power grid from 1991 to now is tens of billions of VND, so the cooperative would like to extend the handover period to recover part of the capital to invest in expanding other business services, ensuring jobs and livelihoods for members. The Board of Directors of the cooperative also requested that when handing over to the Electricity sector for management, the assets must be assessed according to their actual status.

Mr. Tang Van Luyen - Vice Chairman of Dien Chau District People's Committee said: Since the decision of the Provincial People's Committee approving the plan to hand over the power grid in 2014, the district has organized a meeting with commune chairmen and cooperative leaders to thoroughly direct the handover. However, in the district, there are currently two difficulties, the people of Dien Hong and Dien Nguyen communes have not agreed to hand over the power grid, because when building the 0.4KV power grid, it was mainly contributed by the people, and is currently operating effectively and profitably, so they want to maintain it. Along with that, Dien Chau Power Branch needs a large workforce to receive and hand over management. Currently, there are more than 11,000 households using electricity that have not been handed over, and a force is needed to do the receiving work. Therefore, it is proposed to the Provincial Steering Committee to increase the force for Dien Chau Power Branch to focus on receiving work to ensure the plan; propose the Department of Industry and Trade to inspect and notify units about "conditional business licenses" so that the communes know. Dien Chau district's plan is to complete the power grid handover in 2014, while Dien Hong and Dien Nguyen communes are trying to handover in early 2015. The district is directing propaganda to gain people's consensus. In the short term, there will be profits, but in the long term, when the power grid infrastructure is degraded and unsafe, electricity will be consumed, affecting the safety of the power grid.

Meanwhile, in the mountainous district of Tuong Duong, the handover of the power grid has been agreed upon by the localities, but the difficulty is that the Electricity sector lacks human resources to operate and receive. Mr. Hoang Dinh Hoi - Deputy Head of the District's Industry and Trade Department said: The whole district has 15/18 communes and towns with electricity. Up to now, 117 stations have been handed over, the remaining 5 stations have not been handed over, including 4 stations in Tam Hop commune and 1 station in Yen Na commune. However, Tuong Duong district is trying to hand over all 5 remaining stations to the Electricity sector for management by the end of October 2014 at the latest.

Up to now, the whole province has 394 communes that have handed over the rural low-voltage grid to Nghe An Electricity Company for management and electricity sale. At the same time, there are still 28 communes that have not handed over. In addition to the achieved results, the handover of the rural low-voltage grid of the remaining communes is being carried out too slowly compared to the directive documents of the Provincial People's Committee as well as the policies and plans set forth by the Northern Electricity Corporation. The handover and return progress is slow due to some difficulties and problems during the implementation process such as: The rural low-voltage grid projects outside the REII Project were invested in and constructed without really complying with the State's regulations and were transferred to many owners, most of them no longer have designs, so the survey and determination of the remaining value are very difficult and time-consuming; the units directly participating in the handover process have not been proactive in carrying out the handover.

Some localities lack consensus and consistency in directing property owners, so the time is prolonged; localities with REII Projects after completion and put into operation, every year cooperatives do not fully set aside depreciation to pay off debts and interest on loans for construction investment projects, but use the depreciation fund that must be set aside to pay off loan debt for the purpose of paying remuneration, salaries, and other expenses, which is invisibly "doing profitable business", so some cooperatives delay, causing difficulties in handing over. Determining the capital structure is difficult because most owners of rural low-voltage grid projects do not have original records, accounting books, and related documents of the project as a basis for repayment. Currently, the remaining owners of rural low-voltage grid assets agree to hand over in the form of capital repayment, so the handover and repayment records must be complete and in accordance with regulations.

For assets mobilizing capital from the people and capital from cooperatives to build works, there must be original documents including: Resolutions of the People's Council, People's Committee of the commune or resolutions of the congress of cooperative members; documents, books, receipts, and lists of mobilization with signatures of the payers. However, due to the investment process having been over for many years, most cooperatives do not have complete original documents as prescribed. On the other hand, the work of counting and statistics of assets, determining capital sources, making records, organizing meter readings, repairing the power grid to consolidate production, and finding investment capital for renovation requires a certain amount of time, so it cannot be done at the same time in many communes, which is also the reason why the work of handing over the rural low-voltage power grid is behind schedule. On December 4, 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Trade - Ministry of Finance issued Joint Circular No. 32/2013/TTLT-BCT-BTC guiding the handover and return of investment capital for rural low-voltage power grid assets, replacing Joint Circular 06/2010, initially overcoming shortcomings in the handover and return of rural low-voltage power grids.

The above reality shows that, in order to complete the handover process of the rural low-voltage grid, the Electricity sector needs to quickly repay the capital, invest in upgrading, continue to exploit and serve electricity users in rural areas better and better, thus creating high consensus among the people as well as the cooperatives.

Quynh Lan