Ministry of Health and Welfare Announces Application for City Gas Fee Reduction for 660,000 Vulnerable Households

Apply via Community Center, Bokjiro, Gas Company Call Centers, etc.

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoo Byung-don] The government has begun providing application guidance for social vulnerable groups who have not yet applied for urban gas fee reduction benefits.

On the 12th, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that it compared and analyzed subscriber information from Korea Gas Corporation with welfare recipients to preliminarily identify about 660,000 households expected to be eligible for reductions and notified local governments accordingly. The target includes basic livelihood security recipients, near-poverty groups, and persons with disabilities (only severe disabilities) who have not yet applied for the urban gas fee reduction.

However, among these households, some use other fuels such as kerosene or reside in lodging houses or small rooms where gas fees are not paid individually, so not all of them are necessarily missing out on benefits. Each local government plans to send application guidance by mail based on the list received from the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

The government provides six types of public utility fee reduction benefits to alleviate living expenses for socially vulnerable groups, including electricity, urban gas, district heating, wired and wireless telephone fees, and TV license fees.

For urban gas fees, basic livelihood security recipients for livelihood and medical reasons receive a reduction of 36,000 KRW per month for cooking and heating gas fees during the winter season (December to March), and 9,900 KRW per month for the remaining months.

Since benefits require application, many eligible recipients are unaware and miss out. Recently, Democratic Party lawmaker Shin Young-dae revealed that over 410,000 vulnerable households missed urban gas fee reduction benefits last year. Vulnerable groups who have not yet received gas fee reductions can check their eligibility through the call center of the urban gas company in their residential area and then apply.

Applicants can visit their local community service center with an ID and recent payment notice or apply online via the Government24 or Bokjiro (www.bokjiro.go.kr) websites.

This is separate from the Energy Voucher system, which supports energy vulnerable groups with costs for electricity, urban gas, district heating, kerosene, LPG, and briquette purchases; if eligible for both, recipients can receive overlapping benefits.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare stated, "To reduce heating cost burdens for vulnerable groups, this year we initiated the identification and guidance for expected urban gas fee reduction recipients earlier than usual," adding, "We also plan to sequentially identify and expand guidance for other reduction service recipients such as electricity and communication fees twice a year."