HCM City to grant 37,000 house certificates

HCM City (VNA) - From early March, Ho Chi Minh City local authorities have considered granting land-use certificates to those who bought land and houses through informal agreements as well as fix long-term existing environmental pollution problems.

At the press conference last week, Nguyen Toan Thang, Director of the municipal Natural Resource and Environment Department, announced that the department expects around 37,000 parcials of land and houses which were bought with only informal letters between buyers and sellers from mid-2004 – mid-2008 to get official certificates.

“We have trained commune staff to deal with problems and those who bought land and houses at this time should go to local authorities,” Thang said.

For environmental protection, the department will work with the Transport Department to publicly announce four standards related to air pollution and four others related to water pollution in 48 electronic billboards around the city.

“We publicly announce the figure with the hopes of collecting contribution ideas from the local community to reduce pollution,” Thang said.

Related to waste treatment, the department revealed that each day, there are around 7,000 – 8,000 tonnes of waste in the city. Around 90 percent of waste is buried; only 10 percent is recycled and burned.

“We have requested that waste treatment units upgrade their technology and increase waste recycle proportions,” the director added.

Thang also revealed that the city authorities have recently approved the project to burn waste to generate power by the Australia-based Trisun Green Energy Corporation with total investment of 520 million USD.

The project is expected to build one 13ha-factory in Phuoc Hiep Waste Treatment Area, Cu Chi district, which will go into operation two years later. The factory will treat 1,000 tonnes of daily waste and 2,000 tonnes of harmful, industrial and medical waste each day.

Additionally, the HCM City Environmental Protection Agency has asked all 16 processing and industrial zones to install automatic measurement systems and link with the Natural Resource and Environment Department.

Currently, there are three of them which have finished installation and connected with the department.

For enterprises which have over 1,000 cubic metres of waste water, the agency also requested to install an automatic water measurement system.

“In the coming time, we will increase investigations and tighten all methods to protect the environment,” the representative of the agency said.-VNA