Part I: "Forgetting" people's rights
Implementing the Government's 327 program, in 1994, nearly 50 households in Dien Loi commune, Dien Chau district volunteered to receive goods...
Implementing the Government's 327 program, in 1994, nearly 50 households in Dien Loi commune, Dien Chau district volunteered to receive hundreds of hectares of pine forest to care for and reforest bare hills.
After 17 years of care and protection, the old forest has now become a promising raw material area with annual profits of billions of dong. It was thought that the poor people of Dien Loi would change their lives and become rich on their family forest, but since then, all the rights of the people in this forest have been forgotten, even the Forest Land Allocation File has been available since 1999 but to this day the owners have not received it.
Dien Loi is a commune with a large forest area in Dien Chau district, with a total forestry land area of 957.9 hectares, including 644 hectares of pine forest. Before 1994, many places in Dien Loi were still bare forests. Since the implementation of the 327 program, the entire forest area has been cared for and replanted by households. In 1997, the state implemented the allocation of land and forests to households, and in 1999, the Dien Chau District Forest Protection Department transferred all documents to the People's Committee of Dien Loi commune. However, for unknown reasons, the documents have not yet reached the households.
The incident probably would not have been discovered if in 2009, many families like Mr. Hoang Thang, Nguyen Cong Tho, Nguyen Xuan Son, Thai Ba Quang... were households implementing the forest planting project and wanted to invest in building farms, developing livestock, and reducing poverty.
Many immature pine trees were exploited in the wrong process.
They have repeatedly gone to the Policy Bank and the District Agricultural Bank to borrow capital, but every bank they went to required them to have original forestry records before lending capital. When they asked the commune, they received the answer "the district has not handed it over yet, so there is no way to pay back to the people".
Then, in the process of preparing documents for ODA project loans, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Son - son of forest owner Nguyen Cong Tho "through" Mr. Nguyen Duc Thanh (Chief of commune police and commune forest ranger) "borrowed" all the original documents.
At that time, forest owners will know exactly the location of their forest plots and the benefits that forest owners are entitled to as clearly stated in the forestry land allocation records such as "being able to use forests and forest land stably and permanently"; being proactive in production, business, management, enjoying the fruits of labor, investment results on the forest area..."
Mr. Thai Ba Quang - one of the first seven households to receive project 327 could not help but feel indignant: "I don't understand why the commune government did not give us the forest land register even though other neighboring communes, which started at the same time as us, already had it.
We are the owners of the forest, the state has allocated land and forest for 50 years, but now without the certificate, it is as if we have nothing. We also cannot borrow capital from the bank to further develop the forestry industry.
Not being handed over the forestry land records by the Dien Loi commune government is one thing, but what makes the Dien Loi households even more dissatisfied is that since 2003, Dien Loi commune has ignored the people's opinions on signing a contract with the Quynh Van Agricultural and Forestry Trade and Work Cooperative (Quynh Luu district) to exploit pine resin right on the pine forests of these families. Every year, the commune only pays each household a few tens of thousands of VND/ha for each hectare as a protection fee. Seeing hundreds of hectares of their pine forests being exploited by a business from another place, the Dien Loi people cannot help but feel heartbroken.
Not only that, the exploitation is also done against regulations. Mr. Nguyen Xuan Son led us to the pine forest and said, "According to regulations, pine trees with a diameter of 20 cm and over 15 years old can be exploited for resin and each tree can only be carved in one location. However, here, pine trees with a diameter of only 12-15 cm have been carved in 2-3 locations, even both sides of the trunk to collect resin. At this rate, in just five to ten years, the entire pine forest will die. Then the responsibility will fall on our heads."
According to Mr. Le Van Hien, one of three households in Dien Loi who are allowed to exploit resin in his pine forest, one kilogram of resin currently costs about 40,000 VND, each tree can exploit 1.7 kg/year, each hectare has from 350 - 500 trees, if roughly calculated, each hectare will bring in a profit of nearly 30 million VND per year. His family will receive 80% of the collected amount, the rest will be paid to the commune budget. Thus, with over 100 hectares of exploited pine forest, after paying 30 million VND to the commune budget per year, the Quynh Van Agricultural and Forestry Trade and Work Cooperative earns hundreds of millions of VND in profit every year.
Seeing that they had spent so much effort planting forests without any benefits, at the end of 2010, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Son, representing a number of families here, wrote a petition to the commune government to exploit pine resin in their forest plots. However, at that time, the commune government refused because the commune's pine resin exploitation contract with Quynh Van Agricultural and Forestry Trading and Service Cooperative would expire in 2013.
My Ha - Bich Hue
