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NEWS ACTIVITIES
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Viet Nam - Ho Chi Minh City
At the present, in Viet
Nam there are 15 million people (20% of the national population) living in
urban centers, of which the majority reside in HCM city and Ha Noi. In the
past 5 years, Vietnam has really succeeded in joining economic globalization
process, especially cooperating with other Southeast Asian countries. HCM city
has been leading in the high rate of economic growth, about 13 –15% per year.
Official reports state that the average per capita income of Vietnamese
increased from 182 US dollars to 350 US dollars between 1992 and 1997. The
average income per capita of HCM city is three times higher than that of the all
country. During this
period the rate of poverty significantly decreased from 3.8 millions households
(about 30% the total households in Viet Nam) to 2.4 millions (about 15.2%) in
the end of 1998 according to the latest statistics. 90% of them are living in
the rural areas. Ho Chi Minh city, the
largest and fastest developing city with the highest per capita income still has
around 600,000 people (about 12% of the total population) classified as poor.
Although, this rate is the lowest compared to any other city in the
country, the gap between the rich and poor is widest in the city. According to
several social surveys, the majority of poor families still lag behind. In HCM
city, only 25% have improved their situation and 50% have been worse during the
past 5 years. Despite the
great efforts of mass government program called Hunger Eradication and Poverty
Reduction (HEPR) programme, which was first launched in 1992 at Ho Chi Minh
city, many poor families living in critical situation have
still far reached by any government support. The first participatory
poverty assessment supported by the World Bank and just completed last month
shows that only few poor families even know about HEPR programme.
Moreover, because of its procedures and regulation itself the poorest
families have often been excluded from HEPR. Local authorities give loan to only
those who has legal registration papers (ho khau). For many reason, a majority
of the poor families has no such legal papers, even though many have lived in
the city for more than 15 – 20 years. On the other
hand, to deal with urban poverty, city authorities mainly focus on distributing
loans for income generating activities through mass organizations such as Women
Union and Youth Union, whereas others needs of poor communities are neglected.
There is no government program to support slum communities to improve the living
conditions, since they all are under threat of eviction planning.
Slum is considered an eyesore to city authorities and target cleanup by
the year 2020. The conventional housing approach in which the state companies
demolish slum areas and build up low-cost public buildings is still dominant in
the big cities of Vietnam. According to
the HCM city official reports, in 1994 the number of slum units is 67,000
divided into two categories: slums on land and slums along canals. However, these numbers are much lower than realistic numbers.
Between these two slum areas, living conditions of families are more severe
along the canals. The fisrt
large-scale survey of 25,945 slum households living along canals in 1995 shows
that 95% of total units are seen as low-grade, in need of to be reconstruction.
More than 62% of total households have no private latrines; more than 59 % have
no directly access to piped-water supply and about 52% have no electric-meter.
Obviously, the poor families living along canals have been suffering from
environmental degradation and they are also blamed for the cause of pollution. Their houses obstruct the city’s natural waterway and are
responsible for thousands kilograms of solid waste dumped per day into the
canals. These indicators are drawn government’s intervention. The Nhieu Loc-Thi
Nghe canals clearance project (NL-TN), the biggest on-going relocation program
in HCM city, started in 1994. This
project has relocated more than 13,000 households with around 60,000 people
aiming at three main objectives: city mordernization or beautification;
environmental improvement and upgrading living conditions of poor families by
moving them into the new high-rise public buildings. It is likely
that the two first objectives are partly achieved and are requiring another
millions dollars to invest in physical construction and technical treatment,
which are waiting for the international donors like World Bank. The third objective has obviously failed since most poor
families have got little from government support.
Less than 40% of total households are legitimated to buy the flats in the
public housing. Many of them have
finally sold out to the better off families and moved elsewhere.
This story is exactly the same that happened in low-income housing
programmes in other Asian cities in the 1970s –1980s. The rest of the
population, who are often the poorest groups get compensation in cash and
resettle themselves. Since the
compensation were calculated by the housing situation and legacy, the amount
were often very little, which made difficult for the poor families to move into
decent houses. It is alarmed that they are creating the new slums in the
suburban districts. Their living conditions now are even worst than before. Some
are struggling to squatter the vacant lands nearby the new buildings in the
center to sustain their daily incomes. Therefore,
to some extent, the urban master plan with physical biases has eventually ruined
the poor communities and their social networks. The poor families end up with
tragedy or even are more vulnerable in urban development projects. Then, the
government’s good intention and objectives seem to be lip-services for the
poor groups. Moreover,
moving toward the market-oriented development, government has liberated several
public services to private sectors like education and health.
It is likely that these cutbacks in public expenditures have made more
difficult for the poor households. It is found that the majority of poor
families cannot afford to send their children to school.
Especially for the parents have more than one child in school-age, often
one child has to drop out of school to let another one in.
Therefore, the rate of dropping out of school is high. In the age group
15 to 19, less than 40% of the children in the urban centers in Vietnam have
participated in school, in the rural areas this rate is even lower. The cycle of
poverty seem not to end and the children of poor families will be caught in the
same poverty trap in the future. Moreover, the number of children drop out of
school and unemployed people prone easily to gambling, drugs and crimes. Associated with
economic growth, the gap between rich and poor has widened and social problems
become obvious in the recent years. The
city authorities call for mobilization of all the society to deal with these
problems. However, a lack of an
integrated program for urban development, social issues are left in hands of the
mass organizations, who has a little influence in the decision making process in
urban management and development. The
community participation often employed in international non-government
organization in the last decades is still at the experimental level.
This methodology seems to be accepted more openly in the rural areas than
in the urban areas. In 1998, the
government has launched a grass-root democracy decree, which aims at encouraging
people participation in a range of management activities at the local level from
controlling local budget to making implementation planning related to their life
of community. However, it depends
on local authorities willingness and capacity. There is a long way from the
national good intentions and decrees to the implementation in the real life.
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Send mail to Maurice Leonhardt achr@loxinfo.co.th with
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