Nghe An urgently requests to remove obstacles at the abandoned Khe Mu resettlement site.
After more than 15 years of approval, Khe Mu resettlement area, in Kim Bang commune (Thanh Thuy commune, old Thanh Chuong district), has been basically completed. However, up to now, people still cannot move in because there are many problems related to legal procedures.
Urgent but prolonged project
Khe Mu resettlement site construction project, Thanh Thuy commune (now Kim Bang commune), is part of the Project "Building model settlement areas for fishing households on Lam River and especially difficult areas of Thanh Chuong district", approved by Nghe An Provincial People's Committee in Decision No. 6379/QD-UBND-NN dated December 2, 2009.
The objective of this project is to invest in building 2 settlements at 2 locations: Khe Mu, Thanh Thuy commune (now Kim Bang commune) and Trieu Duong, Thanh Lam commune (now Bich Hao commune) to bring 165 fishing households living on the river to settle down. This project is invested by the Department of Rural Development (now the Department of Economic Cooperation and Rural Development), with a total investment after 3 adjustments of more than 86 billion VND.
On May 7, 2010, the project of resettlement area for fishing villages in Khe Mu and Trieu Duong was officially started. To date, the Trieu Duong resettlement area has been completed and put into use since 2015, providing accommodation for 45 households. The Khe Mu resettlement area, which is expected to accommodate 120 households scattered in Phong Thinh commune (now Cat Ngan commune), Vo Liet (now Kim Bang commune), Thanh Chuong town (now Dai Dong commune) and the particularly difficult area of Thanh Thuy (now also in Kim Bang), has not yet been put into use.
At Khe Mu resettlement site, the project land area is 291 hectares, fully planned with items such as: 120 residential plots; internal traffic system; electricity; kindergarten; cultural house and agricultural and forestry land for each household. Each household under the project is allocated about 1 hectare of agricultural land, in addition, 1 hectare of forestry land is also allocated for enclosure, restoration and afforestation.
Since 2012, projects such as road systems, bridges over ravines, drainage systems, electricity, schools, and cultural houses have been implemented. In 2024, the investor will continue to add and complete additional projects such as fences, gates, yards, entrances, flower beds, fire prevention and fighting systems, etc. at the cultural house and kindergarten.
However, from 2009 to now, the project has undergone 3 adjustments to the investment decision, many handovers, but the land recovery, change of land use purpose and planning of marking, dividing production land plots associated with land allocation to households to organize migration to the project area have not been implemented yet. This is the "bottleneck" that makes Khe Mu resettlement area, despite having completed infrastructure, still abandoned.
Need to remove the "knots"
According to the investigation, although the former Thanh Chuong District People's Committee and the Rural Development Department (now the Department of Economic Cooperation and Rural Development) together with the People's Committee of Thanh Thuy Commune (old) have coordinated many times to complete the legal documents according to regulations, however, the project's site clearance and compensation documents are incomplete, leading to the inability to carry out land recovery procedures and change land use purposes. Moreover, in more than 15 years of implementation, the project has gone through 3 stages of the Land Law being amended (2003, 2013 and 2024), causing the legal basis to change many times, making the procedures even more complicated.
In addition, another problem is the lack of consistency in the project's legal documents, which has caused the People's Committee of Kim Bang commune to not have accurate data on the planned residential land area to calculate the remaining area to serve the construction of the plan for marking and dividing agricultural land plots. Specifically, in the initial investment decision and the 2011 adjustment decision, Khe Mu area was arranged for settlement for 120 concentrated households, however, the Provincial People's Committee only approved the planning for dividing land plots for residential land and public works of 120 plots (of which 116 plots are residential land; and 4 plots are for cultural houses and kindergartens), thus, there will be 4 households without residential land..However, the completed drawing of the plot division shows 126 plots of land (with 6 additional spare plots).
In Report No. 81/BC-UBND dated September 10, 2025 on the progress of this project, the People's Committee of Kim Bang commune also pointed out the problem that, after implementing the two-level government, the tasks related to the project were transferred from the People's Committee of Thanh Chuong district (old) to the People's Committee of Kim Bang commune. However, the handover of records and documents from the district level has not been fully implemented, causing confusion for the locality in implementing the next steps.
Not to mention, the People's Committee of Kim Bang commune has not yet grasped the plan to arrange production land to be divided by household or by person, the number of households and people, divided according to the plan of 120 lots or 126 lots. On the other hand, after the division is completed, if the number of immigrant households is not enough according to the records, the remaining area will be very difficult.
Talking to us, Mr. Dang Van Tuan - Vice Chairman of Kim Bang Commune People's Committee said: After the new government came into operation, realizing that there were many problems related to this project, the commune reported and proposed the Provincial People's Committee to direct departments and branches to guide the removal, especially in the work of land recovery and conversion of land use purposes to have a basis for organizing land allocation to people in the soonest time.
This project has lasted for more than 15 years, the beneficiaries according to initial statistics were 120 households. However, there have been many changes: Many households in the previous emergency relocation areas now no longer even need to move to the resettlement area. Therefore, in order for the Khe Mu resettlement area to come into operation, it will certainly be necessary to review and update the list of beneficiaries...
Mr. Dang Van Tuan - Vice Chairman of Kim Bang Commune People's Committee
Faced with the above difficulties and problems, on October 14, 2025, the People's Committee of Nghe An province issued Official Dispatch No. 10927/UBND-NN directing the handling of difficulties and problems in this project. Accordingly, the Provincial People's Committee assigned the Department of Agriculture and Environment to guide the People's Committee of Kim Bang commune in land recovery, land use purpose conversion and production land allocation plan; the Department of Economic Cooperation and Rural Development provided relevant documents on compensation and site clearance.
The Provincial People's Committee also assigned the People's Committee of Kim Bang commune to prepare relevant documents and work directly with the Department of Agriculture and Environment to receive guidance on land recovery, land use conversion and land allocation plans for production; Prepare budget estimates and documents related to planning, marking, land allocation plans, land allocation organization and issuance of certificates to people to send to the Department of Finance for consideration and submission to the Provincial People's Committee for decision. For some items of the project that are degraded or damaged, the Commune People's Committee is requested to prepare detailed estimates and submit them to relevant departments and branches for consideration after bringing households to live stably in the project area.
In addition, the Department of Finance is assigned to review the proposal for financial support from the People's Committee of Kim Bang commune to advise the Provincial People's Committee for decision.
With this drastic direction of the Provincial People's Committee and the coordinated efforts of departments, branches and commune authorities, it is hoped that the problems will soon be resolved, so that Khe Mu can truly become a new peaceful village - a place where fishermen can settle down, start a business and start a stable and sustainable life.