YÊN BÁI – As people in flood-hit provinces struggle to piece together severely disrupted lives, local authorities are calling out for urgent help to deal with major damage suffered by dykes, irrigation works and other constructions.

A Vietnam News Agency report says that the recent downpours and resultant flooding have inflicted severe damage in Yên Bái Province’s Trạm Tấu District, with 13 people dead or missing, 130 houses and 115 irrigation works destroyed and 530ha of crops in danger.

The report said that hundreds of metres of dams and dykes, as well as irrigation works in Hát Hamlet, Hát Lừu Commune have been swept away, leaving nearly 570 households and 25ha of rice crop without water. This would expose the households to a food shortage in the coming months.

After the floodwaters receded, like hundreds of families in Hat Lừu Commune, the seven-member family of Hoàng Thị Quý are lost.

“It’s a disaster. My family spent thousands of hours working on 5,000sq.metres of rice. But we’ve lost everything,” Quý said.

“There is nothing left. Now we have to pin hopes on the next crop, if the irrigation works are repaired soon,” she said.

Irrigation priority

Local administrations have been carrying out several measures to help people overcome the flood’s consequences and restore production.

They are giving top priority to repair damaged irrigation works and provide water for people and crops.

Lò Văn Chiến, chairman of Hát Lừu Commune People’s Committee, said they were only able to restore irrigation works that had suffered slight damage.

The severely damaged works needed financial assistance from the central government, either for major repairs or building new ones, he said.

Phạm Minh Quang, director of Nghĩa Văn Company Ltd, which manages irrigation works in Yên Bái’s Văn Chấn, Trạm Tấu and Mù Cang Chải districts as well as the Nghĩa Lộ Township, said that so far they had repaired 50 works that were slightly damaged, but another 65 works needed financial support from the province.

In Thanh Hóa Province, residents of Thạch Định Commune in Thạch Thành District returned home 10 days after they were evacuated to find that most or all of their property and/or crops had been swept away.

Nguyễn Thi Hảo of the commune’s Tiến Thành Village said her family had harvested just four of 9ha of their rice crop before the floodwaters came. However, the harvested rice had sprouted because they’d not been dried.

Phạm Lâm Đồng, secretary of the commune’s Party Committee, said the floods had destroyed 15ha of rice crops and 30ha of vegetables and killed thousands of heads of cattle and poultry. Hundreds of houses and dikes were severely damaged.

The local administration has instructed relevant offices and people to clean wells and ensure water for daily lives and agricultural production as well as prevent from disease outbreak.

Some 150 families in the central province of Hà Tĩnh were isolated for a week after the only bridge that connected them to the rest of the world fell into the floodwaters.  

Earlier last week, part of the Khe Bượm Bridge in the province’s Hương Thọ Commune in mountainous Vũ Quang District also collapsed. The broken bridge has kept 150 households away from their daily activities of farming and trading.

Nguyễn Hùng Cường, deputy chairman of the commune’s People’s Committee, said local authorities had submitted a report to district authorities, asking for funds to repair the bridge, which had been sponsored by Hong Kong Oxfam in 2001.

He said nearly 800 families of the province will get funds from local authorities to construct flood-resistant houses.

The provincial People’s Committee has decided to fund 776 families in flood-prone areas to build houses that can withstand floods. Of these 550 houses will be newly built and the remaining will undergo proper repairs.

Residents of Vũ Quang, Đức Thọ, Hương Sơn, Hương Khê, Can Lộc, Cẩm Xuyên, Kỳ Anh, Thạch Hà and Lộc Hà districts, will benefit from the fund, which has thus far accumulated a total of VNĐ23 billion (US$1 million) from the local budget and private sponsors.

Poor households and under-privileged families who are social welfare recipients will benefit from the fund, which requires them to build house foundations higher than peak floodwater levels in the region.

Đặng Ngọc Sơn, deputy chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, said the fund will help minimise the loss of lives and property in lowland areas. He said the fund allocation is part of the province’s sustainable poverty elimination policy

The money will be disbursed to residents late this month, with a request to complete works before August 2018.

Yesterday, power supply was restored to 57 households of Mỹ Đức and Chương Mỹ districts in Hà Nội after 10 days. -- VNS