COVID-19... Sharp Increase in Households Unable to Pay Electricity and Water Bills

[Asia Economy Reporter Cho Hyun-ui] Due to the impact of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), the number of people who were cut off from electricity or water services in the first half of this year due to unpaid bills increased by more than 20%. Residents of public rental housing who fell behind on monthly rent also more than doubled.

According to data on the "Social Security Information System (Happiness e-Eum) Crisis Household Detection and Support Status" submitted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare to Assemblywoman Shin Hyun-young of the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee on the 6th, the number of households unable to pay electricity bills in the first half of this year rose from 785,898 in the first half of last year to 1,011,905 this year, an increase of 28.8%. Households cut off from water services due to unpaid water bills also increased by 20.1%, from 8,990 to 10,801.

The number of households facing housing threats such as unpaid monthly rent also increased. Vulnerable households with unpaid monthly rent rose by 11.2%, from 2,933,139 in the first half of last year to 3,260,831 this year. In particular, the number of public rental housing tenants behind on monthly rent surged from 69,563 to 142,558, more than doubling.

Households experiencing health and employment crises also increased significantly. The number of high-risk suicide groups identified by public health centers rose by 18.6%, from 8,637 to 10,246, and those who attempted self-harm or suicide increased by 12.7%, from 51,682 to 58,258. The number of unemployment benefit recipients grew by 20.7%, from 504,012 to 608,412.

The Happiness e-Eum system was introduced in 2010 to detect crisis households in welfare blind spots. It collects 33 types of information such as electricity and water disconnections and health insurance premium arrears from 17 institutions including Korea Electric Power Corporation and Korea Gas Corporation to identify households showing signs of crisis. After local governments verify these cases, if households are confirmed to be in crisis, the government provides emergency welfare services or connects them with private welfare organizations.

However, despite the increasing number of crisis households struggling due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, government support has been criticized as passive. According to Assemblywoman Shin’s office, the government identified a total of 546,600 crisis households through the Happiness e-Eum system in the first half of this year, but only 38.4% of them became recipients of crisis support welfare services. Furthermore, 64.2% of the support provided was through services linked to private organizations rather than public services such as emergency welfare.

Assemblywoman Shin emphasized, “People without records of health insurance or property tax payments are excluded from the Happiness e-Eum detection system, so the government does not even know whether they are welfare recipients,” adding, “The government needs to make more efforts to detect welfare blind spots.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.