Tuoi Tre Online recently returned to the project to upgrade and expand Le Thanh Tong Street (Gia Nghia City, Dak Nong Province) and found that all machinery and equipment had been withdrawn from the construction site due to lack of land and violations.

"Stealing" earth to build projects

Previously, around April 2023, the winning contractor for the Le Thanh Tong road construction project used excavators to dig and large trucks to rumble, carrying soil from a hill to fill the project. After the press reported the news, the local authorities intervened, the illegal digging was suspended and the project has been unfinished ever since.

Responding to reporters at that time, Mr. Le Duc Thinh - Director of Thinh Thanh Dak Nong LLC (the winning contractor for the project) - said that by the end of April 2023, he had brought about ^50,000m3 of soil to the project but was temporarily suspended.

"Currently, the province does not have any licensed quarries to use as landfill materials. Due to the progress of the project, we are forced to find our own source of soil," Mr. Thinh explained.

Similarly, at the end of 2023, a hill in Cuor Dang B village (Cuor Dang commune, Cu M'Gar district, Dak Lak province) was "stolen" to be used as fill soil in the contract package at Km 9 - Km 11 of the East Buon Ma Thuot bypass.

A leader of the Dak Lak Department of Natural Resources and Environment said that the Eastern bypass project approved 11 material quarries (stone quarries). The land exploited outside the scope of the 11 approved quarries was not in accordance with the design documents, which is illegal mining.

These are just 2 of hundreds of projects in Dak Lak and Dak Nong that lack fill soil, leaving the project unfinished.

Mr. Nguyen Van Nghia - Director of the Dak Nong Province Construction Investment Project Management Board - affirmed that the lack of fill soil is the biggest concern for projects in this province. According to him, some projects in Gia Nghia City alone lack nearly 1 million cubic meters of soil and have had to temporarily stop construction.

The bottleneck from… planning

It is a paradox that Dak Lak and Dak Nong have many projects that have to "look for soil" even though they are two mountainous provinces with very good soil quality.

According to the explanation of the localities, the bottleneck lies in slow planning, so up to now, the number of licensed mines can only be counted on the fingers.

For example, the flood prevention dike project south of Krong Ana River (Lak district) still lacks 120,000m3 ^of soil, but up to now, Dak Lak province is still guiding investors to prepare documents for land mine exploration and exploitation.

The situation of rejected and delayed projects, including material mining projects due to planning problems in Dak Nong, is even more tense. Mr. Ho Van Muoi - Chairman of Dak Nong Provincial People's Committee - said that 1/3 of the province's area, with 1,067 projects that cannot be implemented, the province owes the people too much.

Of these more than 1,000 projects, most are traffic infrastructure projects and resettlement projects, which greatly affect people's lives.

In the planning of Dak Nong province for the period 2021 - 2030, with a vision to 2050, the province has identified 112 landfill mines. The area of ​​the planned mines is 1,053.57 hectares and the total reserve is over 79 million cubic meters.

However, when implementing the licensing of mines, there are too many problems that cannot be resolved. Dak Nong province requests the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to issue documents guiding the legal procedures and methods for recovering and protecting bauxite according to regulations in the area where the land mine is granted.