LookAtVietnam – The HCM City Department of Education and Training is planning to build 20,000 low-cost apartments for teachers and educational managers.

Tran Van Thanh, the company’s chairman, who has returned from a trip to Thailand to study housing projects for low-income people, said teachers should get top priority in allotment of low-cost houses.

The apartments will be scattered around the city’s 24 districts but the biggest impediment is getting land at all the proposed locations.

Thanh has asked the city to allot land in places like parks and other green areas or in outlying districts.

He said each apartment would be around 40sq.m. and sold at VND8 million per square metre.

Buyers would be required to pay 30 per cent of the cost with the rest covered by a 25-year bank loan, he said.

“Thailand has been very successful with this model. Since 2001, Bangkok has built 300,000 apartments in outlying areas, 25km from downtown.

“Viet Nam and Thailand have many similarities. I hope the projects will be successful.”

He would invite the HCM City Real Estate Association and other construction companies to join the project, he said.

To Thi Thanh Nga, deputy director of the Department of Education and Training, was happy to learn about the project since many teachers have a need for apartments, but said to build 20,000 low-cost apartments would not be a simple task even without taking into account the problems involved in acquiring land.

If the project managers cannot find unoccupied land, relocating residents would increase the prices of the apartments, she warned, adding that a few years ago she was involved in building a school that cost VND70 billion (US$3.8 million). Clearing the land alone had cost half that amount, she revealed.

A study by Giao Duc (Education) newspaper found that 50 to 60 per cent of HCM City’s teachers do not have stable accommodation, with most of them renting small places near their schools.

The number of teachers living under the poverty line in the city is very high though the department does not have exact figures.

Luu Van Thanh, head of the District 4 Department of Education and Training, said 30 per cent of teachers in the district live under the poverty line and 20 per cent do not have their own houses.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News