Officials in a village in central Vietnam believe relief aid must be shared equally among all villagers, rather than being given to only the needy ones.

Consequently, after a charity group left, village officials would visit each household and requested they give back portions of the flood relief aid so it could be distributed evenly amongst everyone.

That's what happened at Trung Thon Village in Quang Trung Commune, Ba Don Town in central Vietnam’s Quang Binh Province, when a charity group from Ho Chi Minh City arrived there on Saturday to provide relief aid for households in the village, which suffered from severe floods and torrential rains earlier this month.

The group handed out VND500,000 (US$22.32) to each of the 40 most hard up households in the village. The list was compiled by village officials by request of the charity group, consisting of the most impoverished households and those with disabled or lone members.

However, after the charity group left, villagers that had only just received the donations say they were visited by village officials, who demanded that they give back VND400,000 ($17.86), which they said would be distributed evenly amongst all households of the village.

Households that did not comply were threatened with having their next relief aid cut-off, villagers said.

Deputy chief of Trung Thon Village, Le Van Luan, confirmed the collection of the relief money, saying it was only so that other households that were also damaged by the floods would receive their share of the aid.

“We [collected the money] to make it equal for everybody,” Luan said.

However, chairman of Ba Don Town Pham Quang Long on Tuesday said the actions of village officials at Trung Thon Village were “completely wrong”, and that he had demanded the immediate return of relief money to  each of the households.

As of Tuesday morning, village officials at Trung Thon Village had returned to the households to return the money, according to a report by the Party Committee of Quang Trung Commune.

A commune official at Le Thuy District in Quang Binh Province said this could have been a case of a goodwill being misunderstood.

According to the official, relief aid often come in installments, each time with a different value and provided by different charity groups.

As most severely stricken households are prioritized in receiving the aid, sometimes it is unfair for them to receive less valuable goods, while less damaged households remain eligible for better relief goods to arrive later.

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