| Seminar tackles urban development problems |
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(Listed Apr 28, 2008) |
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 Problems about the development and sustainability of urban areas were the main focus of a Construction Ministry seminar in Ha Noi this week.
Deputy Construction Minister Nguyen Van Lien said there were shortcomings in the implementation of urban development.
The seminar was told that overloaded infrastructures, high rates of households below the poverty level, and the low quality of urban management had led to unsustainable urbanisation.
"In general, urban development and urbanisation processes in Viet Nam lack harmonisation," Lien told the seminar.
"These process don’t corresponded to a locality’s characteristics, such as climate, and there are many differences [in living standards, in human resource quality] between urban and rural areas."
Lien called for more concern about environmental protection in the socio-economic development of urban areas.
He said there were many localities where there was fast, but unordered urban-isation due to lack of proper management.
A typical example lay in the fact that 70 per cent of more than 200 industrial parks, processing and economic zones across the nation don’t have sewage treatment systems - or those that exist do not work properly.
Infrastructure development did not correspond to economic growth because of a lack of investment capital, most of it from the State Budget or from overseas aid.
This had led to many problems, such as lack of accommodation, traffic jams, floods and environmental pollution.
Vu Thi Vinh, deputy general secretary of Association of Cities of Viet Nam was critical of the use of agricultural land for urbanisation, which he said could have a negative impact on food security.
Emphasising the problem of overloaded infrastructure systems, bad environmental hygiene and serious noise pollution, Vinh said the large numbers of people moving from rural to urban areas seeking jobs often created social evils that needed solutions.
Vinh told the seminar that urban households below the poverty level had decreased significantly, but were still as high as 30 per cent in some areas.
He said that farmers suffered direct losses from the urbanisation process as social welfare and other benefits amounted to only a small part of what they made from their farm land.
The seminar was told environment pollution in urban areas was attributable to low awareness by people and the lack of a supportive legal system.
Many enterprises and investors paid little attention to their employees’ living standards and protection of the environment, but only to their own profits.
And provincial people’s committees were either not authorised and/or incapable of effectively co-ordinating departments and industries to harmonise economic growth and environment protection.
Participants agreed there was a lack of supportive policies to encourage all sectors and communities to contribute to sustainable urban development. On top of this, there were also shortcomings in administrative procedures for land allocation and the licensing of construction work.
Other problems included the overlapping management of urban decentralisation and the failure of urban authorities to handle specific problems.
Nguyen Lan, general secretary of the Association of Cities of Viet Nam said special focus must be paid on harmonising economic growth and environment protection and on policies to encourage finance for infrastructure development.
Under the Government’s urban development scheme, by 2020, urban areas will embrace 40 million people and cover 4,600 square kilometres of land. This equals 45 per cent of the population and 25 per cent of the total land area.
(Source: VNS) |
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