'Avoid reclaiming people's land to build a market and then tomorrow... a neighborhood will appear'

This morning (November 3), at the 4th Session, National Assembly delegates discussed in groups the draft Law on Land (amended).

Consider land acquisition for commercial housing projects

Delegate Tran Quoc Tuan - Head of the Propaganda Department of Tra Vinh Provincial Party Committee agreed with some contents stated in Article 86 of the draft on specific cases of land recovery, in order to facilitate project implementation as well as people's support for land recovery. However, sharing the view of the Economic Committee stated in the review report, he suggested that the drafting agency carefully consider the regulation on land recovery to implement commercial housing projects.

He said that when implementing a commercial housing project, the first goal that investors aim for is profit. Meanwhile, the draft allows for the revocation to implement this type of project, which risks leading to businesses taking advantage, leading to complaints and lawsuits.

Delegate Tran Quoc Tuan.

Delegates suggested that it is necessary to continue studying and thoroughly grasping the spirit of Resolution 18, which is to implement a mechanism of self-negotiation between people and businesses regarding the transfer of land use rights to implement commercial housing projects.

He suggested that projects with private capital must have regulations to assess the social impact when reclaiming land from people, ensuring transparency and avoiding abuse that causes resentment among people whose land is reclaimed.

The head of the Propaganda Department of the Tra Vinh Provincial Party Committee also proposed that the draft law stipulate more clearly the conditions and criteria for land recovery for the country's socio-economic development. "We should avoid the situation where today people's land is recovered to build a market, but tomorrow houses and neighborhoods are built in the newly built market area," said Mr. Tuan, adding that this situation has occurred in some localities in recent times.

Besides, there are cases of land reclamation for agricultural processing, but 10-15 years later, this area is no longer in operation, is it reasonable to change the purpose to housing or residential area, will it cause social outrage, cause complaints and lawsuits?

"You campaign but in a way that is very disadvantageous to people"

Sharing his experience of more than 30 years of project management, consulting for the World Bank, ADB and then being the investor of several wind and solar power projects, delegate Nguyen Quang Huan (Binh Duong delegation) said, "Our site clearance is not good, the monitoring report on anti-waste also stated that the projects are slow because of a lot of site clearance. In some places, site clearance is delayed by 5 or 10 years."

The project was also implemented in Vietnam but using ODA and World Bank capital, they did it very differently. They implemented resettlement from the beginning, very precisely and the initial preparation period of the project took a bit longer but the phenomenon of complaints from that project was very few.

“They stipulate two mandatory things: environmental impact assessment report and social resettlement report. These reports must be approved along with the feasibility report before the project can be implemented. In our country, resettlement work is mainly assigned to local authorities, so there are many shortcomings,” he said.

Delegate Nguyen Quang Huan.

Specifically analyzing the draft, Mr. Nguyen Quang Huan wondered about Article 92 regulating the organization of implementation of compensation and site clearance tasks; management and exploitation of recovered land, but the Government was assigned to provide detailed regulations. While this is the beginning of resettlement and complaints also start from investment in the implementation organization stage.

"We make laws to make everyone equal, and public agencies have a legal framework to easily implement them, but if we leave it to the Government to specify this in detail, it will be no different from before," Mr. Huan expressed his opinion and suggested that it should be clearly stipulated in the law.

Or Article 93 stipulates the order and procedures for compensation, support, resettlement, and land recovery, with a clause stating that after persuasion and mobilization, if people do not cooperate, then coercion, according to him, is "very dangerous".

“Your campaigning is very harmful to people. For example, people are living near their livelihoods, now they are being moved to a very nice apartment, but if they don’t have a job, they can’t move. And when people haven’t moved yet, haven’t found a new job, it’s dangerous to carry out forced evictions. This is inhumane and can create hot spots in the area,” Mr. Huan noted.

The draft has regulations on the establishment, appraisal, and approval of compensation, support, and resettlement plans, but the method still follows the initial mindset of "very hasty, very urgent, very fast" and there is hardly enough time to fully assess the risks to the people.

From there, he suggested that there should be a professional unit to independently assess the affected area to ensure transparent information because the principle is that people whose land is recovered after relocation have a life "at least equal to, or better than".

“If we don’t evaluate carefully, how can we know if it is equal or better so that people can receive compensation? There are many cases where we compensate, but people spend all the money after receiving it, and end up homeless” – the delegate of Binh Duong delegation emphasized./.