"We're shocked to receive the electricity bills which were issued on September 4 and come to about Bt346,000," Samran said.

What irked him especially was that when electricity officials connected power to the centres under orders from former deputy interior minister Sermsak Pongpanit, he thought it was being done for free to help the disaster victims.

"The municipality provides free tap water to villagers that costs us Bt20,000 a month," he said. "We don't know how we are going to pay the electricity bills. I don't understand why the electricity authority charges us when we didn't even ask them to install electricity in the first place."

On May 22 Tambon Hua Dong was ravaged by a mudslide and Samran said about 100 families whose homes were destroyed were forced to move into temporary shelters at a sports field and the Ban Hua Dong School.

In the interim, while waiting for prefabricated homes to be erected, the municipality had spent Bt10 million on temporary shelters plus food and other assistance for the disaster victims, he said.

The manager of the Uttaradit Electricity Authority, Chok Bamrungpong, admitted that the municipal council's bills totalled Bt346,890 because it had used 108,148.20 units beyond its limit for public electricity this year.

"The bill for the [two] shelters from June to August are only Bt25,403, he said.

"But all in all, the municipality consumed Bt346,890 in electricity," he stressed.

He suggested the municipality apply for more funding from the province.

Uttaradit Governor Uparit Srijan said yesterday the province had increased its emergency funding by Bt100 million so needy local administration bodies, including Tambon Hua Dong, could apply for more funds.