More than 30 households in the southern province of Ben Tre have leased a large land plot to a Taiwanese company without following the regulations and procedures required by local authorities.

In 2008, 32 households in the Dai Hoa Loc and Thanh Phuoc communes, of Binh Dai District, leased a total of 52 hectares of their land to Simmy Aquaculture Co Ltd, a seafood grower, under a term of ten years.

Eighteen of the contracts were notarized, while the remaining 14 deals were only testified by the Thanh Phuoc’s People’s Committee.

No contracts have been reported to the province’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment for approval, which is against the law, according to Nguyen Van Chinh, director of the department.

“The department has formed a team to look into the case, under a request by the province’s people’s committee to find a solution to it,” Chinh said.

“This is a complicated case,” admitted Cao Van Trong, deputy chairman of the committee.

Trong said at first, several brokerages from Ho Chi Minh City contacted local residents regarding the land leasing, but the final contracts were signed with Simmy Co as the lessee.

The province’s local government only noticed this as late as 2012, when the company had already created ponds on the leased land to raise fish, he said.

Simmy Co admitted in a meeting with the province later that they failed to appropriately lease the land due to the lack of knowledge on local laws and regulations.

“It’s required by law that the natural resources department is authorized by the People’s Committee to decide whether a foreign company can lease land at the locality or not,” Trong explained.

“The foreigners are not allowed to directly contact and lease lands from locals,” he added.

The notarization office under the province’s Department of Justice and Thanh Phuoc’s People’s Committee also committed wrongdoings in notarizing the land lease contracts.

Seeking solutions

The land owners agreed to ink a deal with Simmy Co thanks to the reasonable prices they offered, they said.

The company contacted them five years ago, and asked to lease their land plots for ten years at VND8 million per hectare per year.

“I leased them my 4.8 hectare plot and received the full amount of money at once,” said Dang Van Quen, a local from Dai Hoa Loc commune.

Quen said he has used the money, and “if the contract is canceled now, I don’t know how to pay them back.”

As for the solution to the problem, Trong said the province will work with all of the land owners.

“If they all agree to continue to lease the land to Simmy, we will first reclaim the land, compensate the owners, and have them and the company start a new contract as per law,” he elaborated.

Trong, however, admitted that solution is partially infeasible as some of the land owners are not in the locality.

“Some have moved to other provinces, or other countries, but we will give them a deadline,” he said.

“By the end of this year, if the owners do not show up to resolve the problem, we will cancel their land using license.”

Many other cases in which locals in Ben Tre illegally leased their land plots to foreigners have recently been reported.

For instance, Nguyen Tan Bup in My Thanh An Commune, leased 2,000 square meters of land to Qiusheng, a Chinese national, under a contract that is due in 2018.