Hundreds of residents at the Thanh Da View Apartment Complex in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City have been cut off from water supply for nearly a fortnight despite the condo being classified as of the high-grade segment.

With no water for cooking or bathing for more than ten days, the apartment owners have had to eat out and go to their friends’ or relatives’ places to fill these needs.

The water was reportedly completely shut off most of the time and occasionally dripped out.

On Friday, Doan Thi Tuyet, a condo resident, showed Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporter a few small buckets of water which she had managed to ‘collect’ in two days.

Tuyet said this amount of water is insufficient for cooking, so she and her family have to eat out.

Many of the residents have had to go up to the top floor to get water from the swimming pool there to flush their toilets, while others have no choice but ‘seeking refuge’ in their relatives’ houses.

Poor water infrastructure

Thanh Da View Apartment Complex is a high-grade condominium with 20 floors and more than 130 apartments, 100 of which are currently occupied.

Surprisingly, the pumps and pipes transporting water to the underground reservoir are of small sizes, normally used for a single household, leading to the water shortage.

Representatives of the condo’s management board have contacted the complex developer, Thanh Yen JSC, for a solution but the problem has not been resolved yet.

Thanh Yen director Vo Van De told Tuoi Tre that they had installed the water pump and pipes for the condo in accordance with the guidelines from the Gia Dinh Water Supply JSC.

De suggested that the management board of the apartment complex should work directly with the water supply company to seek out a solution, such as replacing the current pump and pipes with more suitable ones.

In the meantime, Nguyen Ngoc Hung, director of the Gia Dinh Water Supply, confirmed to Tuoi Tre that Thanh Yen JSC had asked his company to install proper equipment before. but the request was not fulfilled as digging was then not allowed on the street in front of the complex.

Thanh Yen thus had to install the small equipment instead, according to the director.

According to Hung, if the condo’s management board requests their firm to upgrade to larger pump and pipes, the company will be able to complete that within ten days, excluding the time spent on obtaining necessary permits.

Consequently, the Gia Dinh water supplier currently has to provide 10-15 cubic meters of water per day by tank trucks to the apartment complex as a temporary solution.