City earmarks $104 million for new apartment blocks

Trillions of dong will be earmarked for overhauling dilapidated apartment buildings in Ho Chi Minh City and relocating thousands of affected households, the municipal administration announced Friday.

HCMC Deputy Mayor Nguyen Thanh Tai instructed the Department of Construction to oversee the demolition of 20 ramshackle apartment buildings between now and 2010.

Under the overhaul blueprint, around 2,000 households will be relocated and offered compensation of around VND1.78 trillion (US$104.4 million), Tai’s dispatch said.

The compensation fees would depend on which floor evicted residents lived on in their apartment buildings.

The department was told to ensure evicted residents were properly housed after their apartments were knocked down to make way for new buildings.

The apartment buildings at 289 Tran Hung Dao Street in District 1, 192 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia Street in District 3 and 727 Tran Hung Dao Street in District 5 will be the first to be demolished.

After 2010, another 156 crumbling apartment buildings would also be revamped with some 14,300 households to be resettled, the dispatch said.

In July 2007, the central government issued a decree instructing Hanoi and HCMC to expedite the upgrading of dilapidated apartment buildings by 2015.

Source: Thanhnien