Clerical errors are not too uncommon in any Government administrative system, but last week the People's Committee of Tho Xuan District in Thanh Hoa Province had to withdraw a number of death certificates that were issued to people who are apparently alive.

Mrs. Hoang Thi Tam, 75, one of the four alive people who got the death certificate.

The four death certificates were issued six years ago while the local branch of the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies was running a special programme that allowed poor households to clear their debt in cases where a person or their spouse who took out a loan had passed away.

To take advantage of the bank's offer, the local Committee for Poverty Reduction and the Farmers' Association issued 12 death certificates, which were later used to clear household debts.

Six years later, local authorities found that four of those people are still alive.

Explaining the reason behind the bizarre incident, Nguyen Dinh Tran from the local Farmers' Association said: "The bank said that the requirement to clear debt was that people were dead or went missing. We just wanted to help them clear their debts."

The mistake was officially recorded after the district's judicial officers did not take the time to do a double check before they issued the death certificates.

Chairman of the district's People's Committee, Do Van Quang, said the committee had already cancelled the four wrongly issued certificates, and disciplinary action would be taken against those responsibles. However, six years is quite a long time and we cannot help but wonder why nobody from the local committee ever bumped into one of the ‘dead' people.