Localities speed up land clearance for North-South Expressway

The 13 provinces the North-South Expressway runs through have sped up land clearance to hand over land for the project before June 30.

Ninh Binh, Nam Dinh, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue, Khanh Hoa, Ninh Thuan, Binh Thuan, Dong Nai, Tien Giang and Vinh Long provinces have all made the efforts.

Dong Nai was the first province to basically finish land clearance work and ready to hand over the land for the project, while Nghe An was the slowest and has completed only 77 percent of the work so far.

Land clearance progress in the other localities has exceeded 80 percent on average. 

For example, land clearance progress has hit 83 percent in northern Ninh Binh province.

Vu Van Luan, Chairman of the People’s Committee of Khanh Hoa commune in Ninh Binh province, said about 700 households were affected by land transfers in the commune.

The committee was negotiating with the last 40 households for compensation, he said.

The committee would finish land clearance for the project by June 30, Luan added.

In Thanh Hoa province – where nearly 105km of the expressway runs through, it is estimated some 9,168 households were affected due to the project.

Land clearance progress has reached 92.2 percent, Giao Thong (Transport) online newspaper reported.

Nguyen Duc Trung, Deputy Director of the provincial Transport Department, said the department had ordered district authorities to speed up to ensure all land for the project is handed over before June 30.

Nguyen Duc An, Deputy Director of the Transport Department of Nghe An province, said the major reason for the locality's delay was slow construction of resettlement areas.

To hand over the land fund before the deadline, the province planned to offer affected households money to rent houses to temporarily live in until the resettlement areas were finished, An said.

Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Nhat said the land clearance for the project was being implemented urgently and seriously.

Nhat said the sooner the localities complete land clearance, the sooner they would be able to disburse the public investment capital they were allocated from the State budget.

However, Nhat also ordered the localities to quickly finish their construction of resettlement areas and relocation of technical infrastructure works, including telecommunication cables and power lines, within the project scale.

Previously, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc sent a message last month to direct localities to solve problems in the project’s land clearance.

PM Phuc ordered the Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairpersons of the People’s Committee of each locality to consider land clearance work for the project an important and urgent task.

He also asked localities to quickly implement the completion of 114 resettlement areas in the second quarter of this year to relocate affected households.

There are 11 sub-projects under the North-South Expressway Project, with a total length of 654km.

The total investment of the sub-projects is about 118.7 trillion VND (5 billion USD). The fund for land clearance is about 12.4 trillion VND (529,000 USD).