Yeh Sheau Yeh, Manager of Vedan’s General Director Office, reiterated the amount of compensation after the farmers associations of HCMC, Ba Ria-Vung Tau and Dong Nai had asked the monosodium glutamate producer to pay VND570 billion (USD 32 billion) for thousands of farmers.
 

“The demand for compensation was too high while evidence of damages was not thoroughly proven, so the company will not meet this demand that is just based on unjustified complaints,” Yeh told the Daily on the phone on Monday.
 

Nguyen Van Phung, vice chairman of HCMC’s Farmers Association, said the three associations late last week had asked Vedan to pay some VND570 billion for the farmers, who have been adversely impacted by the environmental pollution in the Thi Vai River. Of this demanded sum, VND153 billion will go to farmers in HCMC’s Can Gio District, VND120 billion to Dong Nai’s farmers and some VND297 billion to farmers in Ba Ria-Vung Tau.
 

Phung said that the demand, which was more than halved from the initial damage claim of some VND1.3 trillion, was arrived at by farmers associations during their meeting with the legal councilor of Vedan last Friday. “If the company still says the evidence is not clear enough to make compensation, I think local environmental authorities will combine with the farmers associations to set up a surveying team joined by Vedan to study damages at every farming household,” Phung said. Meanwhile, Yeh of Vedan said as of on Monday, there was no competent agency to take responsibility in verifying the damages suffered by the farmers.
 

Environment policemen last September found the company was discharging some 4,000 cubic meters of untreated wastewater into the Thi Vai River. Farmers then claimed huge losses caused to their fish breeding and farming in the river’s basin.