LookAtVietnam – Dozens of families have become homeless from sand exploitation activities taking place upstream of the Sai Gon River.

River sand exploited and transported in the Mekong Delta. (Photo: SGGP)

“Each of these vehicles are able to dredge about 50 cubic metres a day. This means that each day the company harvests about 200 tonnes.”

Minh Hung Enterprise has five or six large storage spaces scattered in Tay Ninh and Binh Duong provinces and HCM City. They are all piled up with sand and stone.

Many residents in Trang Bang District have said Minh Hung Company has had a free hand to exploit sand for at least 10 kilometres along the Sai Gon River at a section that runs across the district.

In addition to its own vehicles, Minh Hung has also rented dozens of boats and barges of locals and those in neighbouring areas to dredge sand, they said.

The promise of lucrative earnings from the sand exploitation had lured the exploiters, said Tran Thanh Hung, whose boat was also hired by Minh Hung to dredge sand.

The market price of construction sand is about VND100,000 per cubic metre while exploitation costs are less than VND10,000, according to Hung.

“The overexploitation without impunity has caused serious landsides in the upstream area of the Sai Gon River, which could cause many nearby houses to fall into the river,” Le said.

To ensure safety, these families have had to sell their land to the Minh Hung Company at dirt-cheap prices to move to safer places, he said.

Mismanagement

According to Minh Hung’s sand exploitation license issued by the Tay Ninh Province People’s Committee, the company is allowed to dredge sand from the Sai Gon River at a 10-km section belonging to Don Thuan and Hung Thuan communes in Tay Ninh and Thuan An Commune in southern Binh Duong Province.

The license, which is effective from 2002 to 2016, requires in detail that Minh Hung’s exploitation area be limited to 1.75 kilometres.

The company’s permitted sand exploitation volume is 50,000 cubic metres a year, or an average 140 tonnes a day.

However, all these regulations have been ignored and Minh Hung’s sand exploitation activities have remained out of control.

Thus, the volume of sand dredged daily by Minh Hung now is much higher than the permitted level (200 tonnes over the permitted level of 140 tonnes).

Tran Van Chien, acting director of the Tay Ninh natural resources and environment department, said the department had sufficient information on Minh Hung’s annual sand exploitation activities.

Chien, however, admitted that the data was provided by the Minh Hung company and not the department’s figures.

The department has several times inspected the company’s sand exploitation, and sometimes discovered violations of the license but its faults were not sufficiently serious to be penalised, Chien said.

But residents say sand overexploitation of Minh Hung Company and many other enterprises upstream of the Sai Gon River is the main reason behind the problems in the area.

Local residents are calling for authorised agencies to soon develop strict measures to stop violators and protect the Sai Gon River’s water flow and people’s lives and assets.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News