Hundreds of reservoirs and dams built in the central region in the years before 1990s have become seriously damaged. Local residents have been living in the fear that the dams may get broken in the rainy season.
The Quang Nam provincial authorities have found that 144 out of the 536 dams in the mountainous areas have degraded or been seriously damaged. It is a big headache to the local authorities that the majority of the irrigation works in the 9 mountainous districts have small capacities and usually get damaged in the stormy season, which gobbles up big sums of money for the maintenance works.
According to the provincial Water Resources Sub-department, 173 water reservoirs and dams were built before 1990, of which 45 small ones that serve the watering in the midland and mountainous areas have been severely damaged.
The same situation can also be seen in Quang Ngai. There are 117 water reservoirs in the locality, 100 of which have the capacity of less than 3 million cubic meters. Meanwhile, 89 reservoirs which were built prior to 1990 have become too old.
In fact, the degrading of the irrigation works can also be attributed to the works’ managers.
In the central provinces, big reservoirs and dams have been put under the management of the irrigation work development companies, while smaller works have been assigned to cooperatives or districts’ people’s committees.
Meanwhile, the local managers, who have not been trained well in the field, have been doing things by their “feeling”: they would discharge water if they want, and block the water sources if they feel they need to do that.
Nguyen Hoai Phuong, Deputy Head of the Quang Nam provincial Water Resources Sub-department, said training courses have been organized for the workers who operate the reservoirs. However, a lot of workers have given up the jobs after a short time of working.
According to Phan Van On, Head of the Quang Ngai provincial Water Resources Sub-department, under the current regulations, the workers must finish intermediate school (2-year training) at least. However, it’s very difficult to find the workers with the required degree.
In general, trained and skilful workers don’t want to take this job, he explained.
When asked why the local authorities don’t apply necessary measures to settle the problems as the rainy season is coming which would threaten the local people’s lives, the leaders of the local authorities all said the localities don’t have money to do that.
Phuong said that it would very costly to repair the reservoirs, while the local budgets are limited.
“We have to wait for the disbursement from the state budget to fix the problems. The local budget is just enough for the small dams worth several billions of dong,” Phuong said.
“In Quang Nam, some reservoirs with the capacity of over 3 million cubic meters have been upgraded in recent years thanks to the capital from the WB5 project on the natural calamity management. Meanwhile, the smaller ones are still… awaiting money to be upgraded,” he explained.
On also said that several billions of dong is just a “grain of salt in the open sea,” while it costs at least tens of billions of dong to upgrade a reservoir.
Source: Vietnamnet on 8/8/2013
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