[Vnbiz] CD/DVD Tan Hoa Lo Gom project

[LeDieu Anh]

Dear CACC and [especially] anh Hoanh,

THank you, anh Hoanh, for your fascinating note. However, I need to
make some correction in your note about my project. I am sorry for not
giving you clear information, thinking that you know the canals in
Saigon as well as I do :-)

About the canals in Saigon.

There are five main canals and drainage basins: Nhieu loc - Thi nghe,
Tau hu - Ben nghe, Doi - Te, Tan hoa - Lo Gom and Tham luong - Ben Cat
- Vam Thuat. Tan hoa - Lo gom canal with the length of 7.5km, the
basin area of 19km2 and approx 700,000 inhabitants, going through
district 6, dist. 11, Tan Phu, and a part of Tan Binh, is the shortest
one among these five.

About my project.

This is a bilateral cooperation project between Vietnam and Belgium.
Its scale is much less than what anh Hoanh mentioned since we were
doing in pilot scale to apply the community participation approach
from the very beginning of the project - project design. Total cost is
about 20 million Euro, of which Belgian ODA (grant) accounts for about
35%, city contribution - approx.55% and central government budget -
approx.10%. The Project started in 1998, extended in Oct 2001 and
finished its activities in June 2006.

The project has five main components: solid waste management (in four
wards of dist.6), on site urban upgrading for 166 households, low-rise
apartment blocks for on site resettlement for 72 households with a
small market as a socio-economic support for post-resettlement income
(re)generation, another resettlement site with 119 land lots and a
primary school of 14 classes, and a wastewater treatment plant with
aeration technology with treatment capacity of 30,000m3/day in dry
season and 46,000m3/day in rainy season, which benefit approx. 100,000
inhabitants in the basin of Den canal (a sub-basin of Tham luong - Ben
Cat canal). Along with these, environmental education activities have
been carried out in five primary schools in dist. 6 with a toolkit
developed by the project, community development activities for the
communities, affected by the project with saving and credit schemes,
and capacity building for project stakeholders involved (ward and
district local government, and city departments). Besides, we made a
feasibility study on the canal sanitation and urban upgrading for the
TH-LG canal basin, which is now being implemented with the WB ODA at
much larger scale.

The key features of the project are its comprehensive approach, which
addresses not only the environmental (canal sanitation) but also
socio-economic aspect, which concern directly the living conditions of
the people affected by the project. In case of our project, these are
very low income people, living along and above polluted canal.
Therefore, the resettlement solutions designed with community
participation are more affordable for households. Market and school
were included also based on the discussions with community and local
governments concerned. All affected households now have a stall at the
market. During the project implementation, almost no hholds needed to
be temporarily resettled since the construction was done in phases
(just some hholds, whose houses were closely located next to the
construction site that could be unsafe for them) , which significantly
reduced the burden for state budget and more importantly social
disturbance. There are four households among 129 relocated sold their
apartments/land lots so far after two years of resettlement. We
estimate that no more than 10% will sell their apartment/land lots,
which is an encouraging figure compared to the commonly known 70-80%
in high-rise apartment blocks. And no any enforcement (cưỡng chế) was
applied for any hhold during land acquisition. Solutions provided by
our project in terms of urban planning/upgrading have been considered
and improved in the WB-funded Vietnam urban upgrading project in four
cities Haiphong, Nam Dinh, HCMCity and Can Tho and will be developed
in a nation-wide Urban Upgrading Program of Ministry of Construction
up to 2020. A follow-up study on this is proposed to be done in the
coming 18 months.

All what I listed above are positive physical achievements of the
project. There are also many aspects that we could do better, if ...
Those are lessons learnt from project itself, project management and
also bilateral cooperation, during the whole project cycle, that I am
pleased to share with you, who are interested in.

About myself.

I am not project manager from the beginning of the project. I did not
participate in the project preparation and come to the project in its
extension phase (early 2002 till the last day). Therefore, my role is
to facilitate the project implementation in time only. I was not a
manager before coming to the project. This is my process of learning
by doing. Therefore,  I have a lot of "ifs" to share with you more
than any other manager :-).

Any of CACC , who like to have a CD/DVD of my project, please send
your mailing address to a.ledieu at gmail.com and you will have it.

Have a great day,
Dieu Anh