Proposal to support flood-proof house building for people in 14 provinces

The Ministry of Construction has just submitted a document to the Prime Minister for approval of a policy to support poor households in building flood-proof houses in the Central region. This policy will be implemented for 3 years, contributing to changing the lives of thousands of households.

People in the Central region often have to endure floods. (Photo: VNN)

According to the Ministry of Construction, households receiving support for house building must be residing in areas frequently affected by floods in rural areas or in villages, hamlets, and communes (abbreviated as hamlets) under wards and towns; communes under towns and cities in 14 provinces and cities: Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien - Hue, Da Nang, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, Binh Dinh, Phu Yen, Khanh Hoa, Ninh Thuan, and Binh Thuan.

To implement this policy, the State budget (including the central budget and local budget) supports 12 million VND/household; for households residing in administrative units in difficult areas as prescribed in Decision No. 1049 dated June 26, 2014 of the Prime Minister, the State budget supports 14 million VND/household; for households residing in extremely difficult villages as prescribed by the Government, the State budget supports 16 million VND/household to build houses to prevent floods.

Households eligible for support who need to borrow capital can borrow up to 15 million VND/household from the Social Policy Bank to build flood-proof houses. The loan interest rate is 3%/year; the loan term is 10 years, including a grace period of 5 years. The maximum repayment period is 5 years starting from the 6th year, the minimum annual repayment is 20% of the total loan amount. The Social Policy Bank implements the method of entrusting partial loans through socio-political organizations or directly lending.

In addition to the support level and loan level, if not enough, households will mobilize other capital sources from the community to build flood-proof houses ensuring the scale and quality according to regulations.

To make the policy available to the people public and transparent, the Ministry of Construction proposes to provide direct support to each household. After receiving support, households must build flood-proof houses or renovate and raise the floors of existing houses, ensuring that the usable floor is higher than the highest flood level at the construction site; the minimum floor area must be 10 m2; the main structures such as foundation, frame, floor, and roof are equivalent to the structure of a solidly built house.

The above support policy will be implemented in 3 years (from 2014 to 2016). The People's Committees of 14 provinces and cities must take direct and comprehensive responsibility in formulating, approving projects and organizing the implementation of policies to support poor households in building flood-proof houses in the area, ensuring the prescribed progress; publicly announcing the standards, subjects and directing the review and making a list of poor households receiving support in the area, classifying the priority order of support for the subjects in accordance with regulations./.

According to the Communist Party of Vietnam