Illegal construction on agricultural land, invoices cannot be issued
In the role of people who need to rent places to organize entertainment and picnics, we came to the Long Bien Longan Garden eco-tourism area (Long Bien ward, Hanoi city). Here, we met Ms. Binh (name of the character changed), introducing herself as Ms. Huyen's mother - who is said to be the owner of the Long Bien Longan Garden eco-tourism area, with the right to manage and operate all activities in this area.
Thanks to its convenient location right by the Red River, this area is not only crowded with visitors on weekends, but also always has people visiting and taking photos on weekdays. Each group of visitors is usually from 15 - 20 people, can bring food, a barbecue or rent services provided by the eco-tourism area. For overnight guests, the fee is applied higher, 80,000 VND/person.
When we asked about overnight accommodation services, Ms. Binh said that this area has full items to serve overnight guests. In addition to accommodation tents, there are also container houses, greenhouses, wooden houses, and even a bus converted into overnight accommodation.
The rental prices of accommodation items are applied depending on the type. Greenhouses are priced at 1.5 million VND, wooden houses are 1 million VND, buses converted into overnight accommodation are priced equivalent to greenhouses, Mongolian tents are rented at 500,000 VND/tent.
To book overnight accommodation and use the dining service here, reporters contacted Ms. Huyen, who informed that the lowest price is 250,000 VND/person, including entrance ticket, use of playground, tables and chairs and roof for activities and events. Customers can choose grill buffet or hotpot buffet depending on their needs.
When asked about the possibility of issuing invoices for event organization expenses, Ms. Huyen affirmed that the facility currently does not have value-added tax (VAT) invoices but can only provide ordinary retail invoices.
If you take VAT, I have to contact another unit. VAT invoices increase costs by about 18%. And those invoices are issued in other fields, like loudspeakers, stages" - Huyen said.
Recorded at the Windie Garden eco-tourism area (No. 116 Thach Cau Street, Hanoi), reporters noticed that the campus is thousands of square meters wide, located next to the Red River bank, covered with natural grass. In the center of the area are stages, decorative miniatures, lighting systems and dining spaces.
Regarding the legality of the land area undergoing service business, a man named Vien - introduced as the owner of the establishment - admitted that the land area does not have a certificate of land use rights, it is just a wasteland, so food and beverage business cannot issue value-added invoices. "If you want to have an invoice, you have to ask for it through a restaurant," Mr. Vien said.
Also on Thach Cau street (Long Bien ward), the Thao Nguyen Hoa eco-tourism area is also built on agricultural land along the Red River. This is a quite famous location, attracting a large number of Hanoi people and neighboring areas to visit and play.
A woman named T.A, introducing herself as the manager of the Thao Nguyen Hoa eco-tourism area, said that this place not only serves sightseeing but also organizes many other service activities such as wedding parties and camping. In particular, every Saturday evening there is a live music program with the participation of tea room singers.
According to T.A, to have the current appearance, the investor spent a large amount of money to renovate the land. "In this place, it used to be a low-lying area. My family invested several billion VND in land to level the foundation and renovate it to be like this. The recent storm and flood flooded and swept away everything, so we rebuilt it," T.A said.
When asked about issuing invoices to customers, T.A said: "My company can issue invoices, but the name is another company. As for entrance tickets, we only write tickets. If you want to get invoices, I have to switch to issuing food. If you don't need to, you don't have to write. Here, individual customers usually don't get invoices because the origin of the land here is agricultural land".
Request to stop power supply for all violating locations
Talking to reporters, Mr. Nguyen Duc Hung - Deputy Head of the Economic, Infrastructure and Urban Department of Long Bien ward - informed that the cases of land use and organization of service activities in the riverbank area that Lao Dong Newspaper reflected are in the handling plan of functional agencies according to Plan No. 93.
According to Mr. Hung, functional agencies have sent a document to the power supply unit, requesting to stop power supply for all violating locations. At the same time, the locality will also continue to have a document requesting the Ward Police and relevant functional forces to get involved in verifying, clarifying and handling according to the provisions of law.
From the perspective of the local government, of course, such activities cannot be allowed to exist and will be resolutely handled. This is a definite issue. We will have a document sent to the Ward Police to coordinate handling," Mr. Hung affirmed.
According to Mr. Hung, before the time of merging the administrative unit, the area belonging to the old Long Bien ward had been requested to dismantle the violating items and return the ground.
This leader also said that the locality once developed an overall plan to manage and exploit the land fund in the riverbank area through bidding. However, the implementation process had to be temporarily suspended due to the arrangement and reorganization of the local government according to a two-level model.
We have organized bidding, but the bidding session was unsuccessful. The plan at that time was to organize agricultural production combined with ecological service activities and entertainment to support agricultural production purposes according to Plan 7006 of Long Bien district previously.
The old Long Bien ward has also developed a plan and organized bidding. However, in the process of implementation, the bidding documents have not been completed as required. The consulting unit hired to organize the bidding has not completed the necessary procedures, so functional agencies have requested to stop the bidding. Since then, this has been temporarily suspended," Mr. Hung said.
Mr. Hung emphasized: "Our point of view is that all violating works on land and violating contents as reported by the press will be considered and applied handling measures according to regulations".
