A reader recently wrote to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper about a section of the Rach Dia River in Nha Be District, Ho Chi Minh City which was being encroached on by a villa project.

Upon receiving the letter sent by reader Thuy Vu, Tuoi Tre reporters paid multiple visits to the river section in question.

On the morning of October 13, the reporters saw excavators pouring earth from dump trucks to fill the river bed next to the villa, which covers an area of thousands of square meters.

A new land plot was quickly formed on where bushes of nipa palm used to grow. 

Large trees were immediately planted on that plot, which stretched tens of square meters, while many piles were driven into the river bed.

On Tuoi Tre’s return on the morning of October 18, the land plot was further expanded to hundreds of square meters while heavy construction vehicles kept working there.

During Tuoi Tre’s 30-minute observation, three dump trucks carried debris, stone, and earth to the mentioned location to fill the river bed. 

Some local people said the number of dump trucks exceeded ten and they had operated there for over a month.

The Tuoi Tre reporters revisited the place on the morning of October 20, before they took another trip by boat on October 25, when the river bed was already considerably narrower than before while a new garden came into existence and all of the encroachment was still underway.

Tuoi Tre reported the case in person to officials of the People’s Committee of Nha Be District and were told that it needed to collaborate with the city’s waterway management center to handle the issue.

As per the regulations, the committee will book the case and impose an administrative fine as first steps while further solutions may involve dismantling the garden and forcibly returning the river bed to its original state, according to Ha Minh Tan, head of the urban management division of Nha Be District.

Tan added that local authorities had handled a number of cases where households had built chicken coops and pig houses on the river bed, but this is the first time a case of a housing project encroaching on the river has been known.

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