More than 1,000 people in about 300 households at the Thanh Da tenement in Ho Chi Minh City’s Binh Thanh District will be moved to another tenement before June 30, as their buildings are at risk of collapse, under a plan by district authorities.

>> HCMC to remove 1,300 households from landslide-prone areas The District People’s Committee held a press conference on Thursday to announce the plan under which these households must be urgently evacuated from Blocks IV and VI of the tenement in Ward 27. Phan Ngoc Anh Huy, deputy director of the District Site Clearance Board, said the two blocks, which are among eight blocks of the tenement that was built before 1975, have subsided and are leaning seriously, threatening to collapse. Therefore, all of the residents of the two blocks need to be evacuated immediately to protect their lives and property, Huy said, adding that local authorities will give each family VND6 million (US$286) to cover transportation costs. These families will be relocated to another tenement that can accommodate 1,050 households. This new tenement is located in a resettlement area of 17,519 hectares in the district’s Ward 12, Huy added.   The construction of this resettlement facility is underway and will be completed in June, said Duong Hong Thang, deputy chairman of the district People’s Committee. The authorities are considering a compensation plan for the relocated families, expected to be completed by October of this year, Thang said.  The local government is calling for investments to build two new blocks in place of Blocks IV and VI, Thang said. The district authorities are developing a project to prevent landslides in areas along the Saigon River near Thanh Da to ensure that new tenements built in the future will not be at risk of leaning and subsidence, as the two aforementioned blocks were, Thang said. Many other areas in the Thanh Da peninsula on the river have also suffered from landslides for the past several years, according to local authorities.