Part of Belt Road No.4 in Hà Nội's Hà Đông District. VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI – Ground clearance work for the Belt Road No.4 project will be accelerated to be completed by the end of this month, according to the Hà Nội Transport Construction Investment Project Management Board.

Since late last year, the board and districts in the project area have been focusing on speeding up the construction progress.

Nguyễn Chí Cường, the project management board’s director, said: “In just a short time, the city has handled a huge amount of work.”

To date, the city has approved and recovered over 770 out of 791ha of land, reaching 97.34 per cent of the plan.

Localities have basically completed the work of measuring, counting, confirming the origin of residential land and approving residential land plans for 200 out of the total 1,125 households with an area of ​​about 3.25 out of 16.5ha, according to Cường.

The project management board has currently received over 744 out of total 770ha of land, reaching 96.64 per cent of the cleared land area of ​​the districts to complete demining and hand over to construction contractors.

“One sensitive issue, related to the customs and spiritual beliefs, is having to relocate a very large volume of graves. But thanks to dissemination and people's support, up to now the mobility rate has reached 97.47 per cent,” he added.

In addition, the project had also relocated 444 derelict graves during construction. Currently there are about 46 remaining.

In order to win people’s support, the municipal authority is paying special attention to the arrangement and construction of resettlement areas.

The city's viewpoint is to make full use of its capabilities, in accordance with the law, to arrange resettlement areas in favourable locations with high commercial value so that people can feel secure and stabilise their lives.

Up to now, the city has built 13 resettlement areas with a total area of ​​32.5ha, of which six have been completed and the remaining areas are under construction.

The city has arranged resettlement for 140 out of 885 households.

According to Cấn Thị Việt Hà, chairwoman of Hà Đông District’s People’s Committee, in the district there is quite a lot of land and graves located in the clearance area for the project.

Many households have land with high economic value, but thanks to the assessment and compensation work being done methodically, publicly, transparently and objectively, people are willing to hand over the land.

In addition, households subject to clearance were also given resettlement houses in quite nice areas that encourage people to move helping ensure the project’s construction progress.

Immediately after Tết (Lunar New Year), construction contractors mobilised 100 per cent of machinery, equipment and workers on the entire route.

Currently, more than 700 engineers, workers and drivers, and hundreds of construction machinery have been mobilised on the construction site.

One of the biggest difficulties is moving technical infrastructure that needs to be implemented this year.

The project management board is coordinating with relevant units to focus on moving underground and surface technical infrastructure items including medium and low voltage electricity, information systems, water supply and other items, striving to complete in the second quarter of this year.

It is expected that the foundation construction for high voltage poles in Mê Linh District will be completed in March and to basically complete the relocation of high voltage power lines from 110KV to 500KV across the entire route in the third quarter.

Additional land acquisition work for items of ditch upgrading and moving high voltage poles is expected to complete and hand over to the project management board before March 31. VNS