Former North Vietnamese platoon commander Nguyen Van Quy points at the Kontum area of central Vietnam showing in red where US wartime forces sprayed the toxic defoliant Agent Orange.

US funding to help clean up an airport contaminated by the highly toxic Agent Orange that it sprayed over Vietnam during the war has not been disbursed efficiently, a Vietnamese official said Tuesday.

“The committed funds from the US government have not been disbursed,” said Cuong.

He added that a joint task force on decontaminating the Da Nang airport, where US forces stored Agent Orange and loaded it onto airplanes for wartime defoliation missions, “has not met with our expectations”.

US ambassador Michael Michalak told the meeting that bids have been received and a contract will soon be announced for environmental assessment and preparatory remediation work at the airport.

Da Nang airport is one of three dioxin “hot spots” that also include former US airbases at Phu Cat and Bien Hoa.

At Vietnam’s request, the US is focusing its assistance on the Da Nang airport.

President Barack Obama this year signed a bill that allotted US$6 million in assistance for dioxin cleanup efforts and related health activities.

“We’re not just talking. We’re working together on concrete projects,” Michalak told the Joint Advisory Committee (JAC) which meets until Thursday.

Since last year’s JAC meeting, the US has begun assisting disabled people in the Da Nang area, and in June both sides began testing “bioremediation”, the use of biological organisms to destroy dioxin at the airport, Michalak said.

“If successful, bioremediation will provide an innovative and cost effective dioxin remediation solution,” he said.

The US Agency for International Development has three-year agreements with a number of organizations for the handicapped to provide health and rehabilitation services and livelihood development support to people with disabilities in Da Nang.

Between 1961 and 1971, the US army dropped some 80 million liters of Agent Orange, which contained 366 kilograms of the highly toxic dioxin, over large areas of southern Vietnam.

The chemical has caused a spate of birth deformities and about three million Vietnamese people have been affected by chemicals sprayed by the US forces. At least 400,000 have died of diseases linked to Agent Orange.

Cuong called for the establishment of long-term projects “to deal with the suffering of the victims.”

Source: AFP, Thanh Nien