LookAtVietnam – In his first question and answer session in front of National Assembly, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Hoang Tuan Anh discussed the encroachment of people upon historical and cultural relic sites and abuse of religious sites.

Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Hoang Tuan Anh.

The minister said that most of the encroachment cases happened tens of years ago and these cases can’t be solved in the next few years.

He said the government gives priority to restoring national cultural relics, aiming to have 60% of them restored and preserved by 2010 and 100% by 2015. However, the government only allocates funds for restoration and local governments have to pay for site clearance and compensation.

In the ancient capital city of Hue city, there are 2,800 families living in protected area 1. In Hanoi, 586 households are located inside the Co Loa historical site. Local authorities have to seek land to resettle these families, the minister said.

“Encroachment on relic sites can be settled if provincial authorities are determined,” he concluded.

Hanoi, which hosts two-thirds of the country’s relics, has invested a lot of money and reserved large areas of land to restore relics but it has the largest number of relic sites that have been encroached upon. It is estimated that 1,200 families and 11 organisations are using land of 104 relics.

One charity-box at one pagoda

Regarding the abuse of charity-boxes at religious sites, Minister Hoang Tuan Anh said that according to regulations, each temple and pagoda is allowed to have only one charity-box but actually, temples and pagodas have tens of charity-boxes. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will ask provinces and cities to control the numbers of charity-boxes at religious sites. The Ministry of Finance will issue a circular guiding the use of charity money.

The Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Economic Committee, Nguyen Van Phuc, mentioned a good experience of the southern province of An Giang in using charity money. In 2007, Chua Su Pagoda invested VND30 billion ($1.76 million) of charity money in building schools and assisting poor people.

“I still don’t know which of the two jobs, restoring relics and solving the encroachment upon relic sites, will be done first,” said National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Phu Trong.

Le Nhung