HCM CITY — The Mekong Delta city of Cần Thơ will relocate 9,400 households with more than 37,000 members living along rivers and canals by 2030 to ensure their and waterway safety and sanitation, according to its Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

More than 5,300 will be relocated by 2020.

The resettlement will be done in existing residential areas and six news ones to be built.

The city targets having no stilt houses along rivers and canals by 2030 to ensure people’s safety and that of vessels using the water bodies.

Speaking at a meeting on Thursday, Võ Thành Thống, chairman of the city People’s Committee, said relevant departments and agencies should study additional measures to support the people to be relocated.

“The important things are the consent of people to move and that there are highly favourable conditions in their new living areas for them.”

Districts should apply measures such as planting trees along the banks of rivers and canals to prevent erosion, he said.

In 2010-17 the city suffered 153 cases of erosion along rivers and canals in which four people died and five were injured and 53 houses were destroyed, according to the city’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The total length of the affected areas was 6.1 km. 

This year there have been 16 instances in which 10 houses were destroyed and 43 were damaged.

Even some densely populated areas are highly vulnerable.

The threat of erosion remains serious, especially in sections that have high waterway traffic, according to the city’s Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control and Search and Rescue.

To prevent erosion, nine embankments with a total length of nearly 22 km will be built in eight districts in 2018-20.

Nguyễn Ngọc Hè, director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the city is petitioning the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to obtain Government funding for the city to build two embankments along the Ô Môn River at a cost of VNĐ421 billion (US$18 million).

One of them, at the Thới Lợi area in Ô Môn District’s Thới An Ward, will be 1.57km long, and the other will stretch 1.9km from the Ô Môn Bridge to the Ba Rích rivulet mouth.

The city has 155km of rivers and canals threatened by erosion, according to the department. — VNS