Workers on the job after land clearance in a section of the project running through Ninh Bình Province. — Photo baogiaothong.vn

HÀ NỘI — The 13 localities the North-South Expressway runs through have sped up land clearance to hand over land for the project before June 30.

Ninh Bình, Nam Định, Thanh Hóa, Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh, Quảng Trị, Thừa Thiên-Huế, Khánh Hòa, Ninh Thuận, Bình Thuận, Đồng Nai, Tiền Giang and Vĩnh Long provinces have all made the efforts.

Đồng Nai was the first province to basically finish land clearance work and ready to hand over the land for the project, while Nghệ An was the slowest and has completed only 77 per cent of the work so far.

Land clearance progress in the other localities has exceeded 80 per cent on average. 

For example, land clearance progress has hit 83 per cent in Ninh Bình Province.

Vũ Văn Luận, chairman of the People’s Committee of Khánh Hoà Commune in the province, said about 700 households were affected by land transfers in the commune.

The committee was negotiating with the last 40 households for compensation, he said.

The committee would finish land clearance for the project by June 30, Luận said.

In Thanh Hoá Province – where nearly 105km of the expressway runs through, it is estimated some 9,168 households were affected due to the project.

Land clearance progress has reached 92.2 per cent, Giao Thông (Transport) online newspaper reported.

Nguyễn Đức Trung, deputy head of the provincial Transport Department, said the department had ordered district authorities to speed up to ensure all land for the project is handed over before June 30.

Nguyễn Đức An, deputy director of the Nghệ An Province Transport Department, said the major reason for the locality's delay was slow construction of resettlement areas.

To hand over the land fund before the deadline, the province planned to offer affected households money to rent houses to temporarily live in until the resettlement areas were finished, An said.

Deputy Minister Nguyễn Nhật said the land clearance for the project was being implemented urgently and seriously.

Nhật said the sooner the localities complete land clearance, the sooner they would be able to disburse the public investment capital they were allocated from the State budget.

However, Nhật also ordered the localities to quickly finish their construction of resettlement areas and relocation of technical infrastructure works, including telecommunication cables and power lines, within the project scale.

Previously, Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc sent a message last month to direct localities to solve problems in the project’s land clearance.

Phúc ordered the Party Secretary and head of the People’s Committee of each locality to consider land clearance work for the project an important and urgent task.

He also asked localities to quickly implement the completion of 114 resettlement areas in the second quarter of this year to relocate affected households.

There are 11 sub-projects under the North-South Expressway Project, with a total length of 654km.

The total investment of the sub-projects is about VNĐ118.7 trillion (US$5 billion). The fund for land clearance is about VNĐ12.4 trillion ($529,000). — VNS