Unscrupulous resident charges for water in Central Highlands
08-SEP-2008 Intellasia | Thanhniennews
Sep 8, 2008 - 7:00:00 AM
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School principal Dinh Trong Bay says his school has to pay 200,000 dong (US$12) a month to a local resident to access a public irrigation system which was formerly accessible for free.
Bay, principlal of Dam Rong Ethnic Boarding School in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong, told Thanh Nien that the school had been forced to pay resident Ha Woan for the use of clean water each month as Woan controlled a set of valves turning the water on and off.
In 2000, the provincial Clean Water and Environment Sanitation Centre built the Lieng Trang I Irrigation Construction project to allow a group of Da Tong Commune residents to access water from nearby forest streams.
The project helped water move naturally through pipelines and since no valves were installed, locals could access the free water as much as they needed.
The centre even paid Ha Woan 150,000 dong (US$9) a month to help temporarily monitor the project.
In 2005, however, the centre assigned Dam Rong District's Public Construction Management Office to monitor the irrigation system, but it seems no one has checked on the project since.
No problems were reported until workers of an ongoing road project broke a section of the water pipeline later that year.
Woan said that since no one seemed to care about the break, his family fixed the pipeline at a cost of more than three million dong (US$180).
"No one paid money back to me so I did not let others continue to use water," he said.
To recoup his money, Woan installed valves to block the water flow through the pipeline and would only open them once residents had paid him a fee.
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