People in Nghe An are charged interest for late payment of school construction fees.

In November, Nghe An Newspaper reporters continuously received complaints from residents of Quynh Xuan Ward (Hoang Mai Town) about being forced to pay school construction fees for many years. “Many households have not yet paid, but the ward has charged interest. Even when going to the ward to ask for a paper, they refused to sign,” said Mr. Hoang Van Phu indignantly.

The newly built area of ​​Quynh Xuan Kindergarten. Photo: Tien Hung

According to the reporter's investigation, in 2016, Quynh Xuan Ward had a policy to invest in expanding the kindergarten. Mr. Vu Van Tu - Chairman of Quynh Xuan Ward People's Committee said that the number of students in the area was too large, while Quynh Xuan Kindergarten had too few classrooms, leading to an overloaded situation. "There was a time when we had to build temporary classrooms outside the garage, which was very cramped. That's why we had to build 11 more classrooms," Mr. Tu said.

The cost of building more rooms is about 10 billion VND, half of which is from the state budget. The leaders of Quynh Xuan ward forced local residents to pay the rest. “At that time, we also planned to collect fees based on household members and working age. But then we saw that collecting fees like that would cause many elderly people to lose out, so we decided to collect fees based on age from 7 to 60,” Mr. Tu added.

Quynh Xuan Ward has a regulation that every person from 6 to 60 years old must contribute 600,000 VND to build a kindergarten. The contribution is 200,000 VND/person per year, applied within 3 years to build a kindergarten in Quynh Xuan Ward.

This amount is collected according to the rice crop.Many families with many children have to pay millions of dong. According to the people, this policy has been strongly opposed by them. However, the local government still sent officials to collect 200,000 dong per person per year for 3 years. Many families who work far away and do not know about this policy, recently returned to their hometown and were shocked when they received a "debt collection notice" from the government.

“My husband and I have been working abroad for 4 years now. There are 6 people in our family, now they added interest and lost a lot. We protested and did not pay, so we went to ask for papers and procedures but they did not allow it,” said a woman in Block 5 who asked to remain anonymous.

Fee declaration form of a household in Quynh Xuan. Photo: Tien Hung

“If the ward proposed a support plan, people would pay as much as they could, but here they forced people to pay, and arbitrarily set a mandatory collection level. My family had to pay 1,800,000 VND, but because we didn’t have enough money to pay, the second time the commune added 50,000 VND in interest per person,” the woman added.

However, there are many cases where, despite paying the full school construction fee, children are not allowed to study here. “Before, the school was too small, so I sent my child to study elsewhere. Now that I have paid to build and expand the school, I cannot let my child study again,” one parent expressed indignation.

Despite being forced to pay for the school's construction, many children were not accepted to study here because the school was full. Photo: Tien Hung

Discussing this, the leader of Quynh Xuan Kindergarten said that because the number of students is currently enough compared to the assigned quota, they will not accept any more. "Recently, many parents in the area have come to ask for their children to study here, but we have not received any. We have to promise them to wait until next year," he said.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of Quynh Xuan Ward said that the collection of 200,000 VND/year for each person, within 3 years, for the age group from 6 to 60 years old, is available, the amounts have been collected and implemented since October 2017, contributing to the construction of Quynh Xuan Kindergarten. Currently, about 4 billion VND has been collected from the people. Currently, the project has been put into use, meeting the needs of the locality.

“At that time, we thought this policy was correct,” Mr. Tu said, denying that the ward had made it difficult to complete procedures and paperwork for households that had not paid for school construction.

Quynh Xuan ward officials were accused of causing difficulties and refusing to sign documents when people were late in paying fees. Photo: Tien Hung

Regarding the ward charging interest to households that pay late, Chairman of Quynh Xuan Ward said that not only the kindergarten construction fee, but all revenues in this ward have been charged interest if they have been late for many years. "This has been done by the leaders of previous terms, and for a long time, people have not had any comments, and have always complied well," Mr. Tu added.

Speaking to Nghe An Newspaper reporters, the leader of Hoang Mai town said that forcing people to pay for school construction, and not having the paperwork done if they don’t pay, is seriously wrong. “Currently, the town has established an inspection team, collected all relevant documents and gone to the locality to verify. The town’s viewpoint is to deal with any mistakes, without covering them up,” he said.