Yang Hyang-ja "KEPCO has no system to prevent 'muktwi' fraud in welfare discounts for families with newborns"

Unable to Even Track Fraudulent Benefits and Recovery Collections

Nearly Half of 2,902 Households Still Have Unrecovered Funds

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Yoon Jamin] It has been revealed that although there are 2,900 households fraudulently receiving welfare discounts for childbirth households from Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), there is no system in place to detect such fraudulent claims.

According to the "Status of Fraudulent Welfare Discount Claims and Recovery of Penalties for Childbirth Households" received by Representative Yang Hyangja (Gwangju Seo-gu Eul) of the National Assembly's Industry, Trade, Energy, Small and Medium Enterprises Committee from KEPCO, there is currently no proper system to identify fraudulent recipients related to various discount programs.

The childbirth household welfare discount system is a program that provides a 30% discount on monthly electricity bills for three years to households with at least one infant under three years old from the date of birth.

It is known that the total amount discounted under the childbirth household welfare discount system from 2017 to 2021 reached 283.2 billion KRW.

Representative Yang Hyangja pointed out, "When a childbirth household receiving the discount moves, the discount benefit for the previous residence should be terminated, but KEPCO took no special measures," adding, "The fraudulent claims caused by KEPCO's negligence and lack of action are ultimately being covered by taxpayers' money."

Although this issue was pointed out in KEPCO's internal audit last year, even after a year, no system to manage fraudulent claims has been established.

Representative Yang stated, "Among the 2,902 fraudulent households identified in the audit, nearly half?1,288 households?have yet to have recovery actions taken."

She also criticized, "Due to KEPCO's lax and careless management, the status of a project that spent about 300 billion KRW over the past five years is not even being tracked," and added, "Before raising electricity rates by 2,000 KRW per household for a family of four citing severe deficits, a thorough inspection must be conducted to ensure that taxpayers' money is not leaking due to KEPCO's poor oversight."

Meanwhile, KEPCO recorded an operating loss of 5.8 trillion KRW last year and has already posted a loss exceeding 14.3 trillion KRW in the first half of this year alone.

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