Cô Giang apartment tower in District 1’s Cô Giang Ward, was built in 1968 and houses nearly 900 households. It has seriously deteriorated and is in grave danger of collapsing. — VNA/VNS Photo Hoàng Hải

HCM CITY (VNS) — HCM City plans to demolish 120,000sq.m of dilapidated apartment buildings by 2020 and build 240,000sq.m of new apartments to replace them, according to its Department of Construction.

It has furnished a list of 14 buildings to be demolished and seven to be built to the Municipal People’s Committee.

Of the city’s 1,244 apartment towers, 533 inhabited by more than 50,000 families were built before 1975. 

The department studied 88 of them and found 23 face a high risk of collapse.  

Cô Giang apartment tower in District 1’s Cô Giang Ward, for instance, was built in 1968 and houses nearly 900 households. It has seriously deteriorated and is in grave danger of collapsing.

In 2006 the People’s Committee had planned to move its residents out and rebuild it.

In 2011 it ordered the immediate demolition of Cô Giang, but the order has not been carried out. Around 300 families have refused to move out because they did not agree with the compensation they are to receive or the new houses they are to get in return, claiming they are too far away.

Despite being the city’s central district, District 1 has 89 apartment towers that face a serious danger of collapse, threatening the lives and properties of 7,000 families, according to Trần Thế Thuận, chairman of its People’s Committee. 

The district is studying the 89 apartment buildings and doing a social survey of the 7,000 families living in them.

First, eight buildings facing the highest risk of collapse will be rebuilt followed by the others, with the schedule based on the state of the buildings.

The district plans to start the project in the second quarter of this year.

At a meeting with the district People’s Committee earlier this month, Đinh La Thăng, Secretary of the city Party Committee, called on the city and local authorities to allot funds for the work.  

He also urged District 1 to rebuild all apartments facing a risk of collapse within the next five years.

The city would announce policies to resolve the problem of aged apartment buildings, he said.

The task of rebuilding has been at a standstill in recent years because of difficulties in reaching agreement between investors and relocated households over compensation and the locations of resettlement houses. — VNS