Difficulties in removing temporary houses in La Êê border commune

Many difficulties

In early March 2025, Mr. A Viet Mooc's family (BLang village, La Ee commune) received 60 million VND in support to demolish their temporary house. Initially, Mr. A Viet Mooc planned to build a brick house, but due to the increase in material prices and high transportation costs, the family decided to build a wooden house.

However, the labor cost, wood cost... has already cost 60 million VND. Mr. A Viet Mooc's house has an area of ​​about 40 square meters (10 meters wide, 4 meters deep), corrugated iron roof, tiled floor, but after more than 4 months it is still not finished due to lack of wood and funds.

Next door, Mr. Riah Ne's family is in a similar situation, although the house was demolished nearly a month ago, only two pillars have been erected because there is not enough wood.

On November 16, 2024, the Government Office issued Notice 523/TB-VPCP on the conclusion of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at the first meeting of the Central Steering Committee on the implementation of eliminating temporary and dilapidated houses nationwide. Accordingly, the support level for building a new house is 60 million VND/household; similarly, for repair, it is 30 million VND/household.

According to Ms. Alang Thi Hang (BLang village, La Ee commune), this is a huge amount of money for ethnic minorities, but to build a house in a high mountainous area like La Ee commune, it is not enough, especially in the situation of increasing material prices and difficult transportation due to the serious degradation of National Highway 14D.

At the end of last year, from the State's support of 60 million VND, Ms. Alang Thi Hang's family borrowed more to build a level 4 house with brick walls and a corrugated iron roof (about 80 square meters). According to Ms. Hang's calculations, the cost of building the house was only over 150 million VND, but after construction, the total cost increased to nearly 350 million VND, her family had to borrow more from the bank and relatives.

At the time Ms. Hang built her house, a block of sand bought from Cha Val (about 50km from her house) transported to Cho Chun commune (old) cost about 1.3 million VND, a bag of cement (50kg) cost 120,000 VND, a brick cost 2,600 VND, a 1m2 of grade 2 floor tiles cost 300,000 VND. The construction cost for a 1m2 level 4 house cost 1.4 million VND...

Construction materials problem

La Êê commune was formed on the basis of merging La Êê commune (old) and Cho Chun commune, with a population of about 2,300 people.

From 2023, when National Highway 14D is degraded, every time people want to go to the center of Da Nang city to shop or get medical treatment, they have to spend nearly 7 hours sitting in a car or riding a motorbike continuously. Therefore, the cost of transporting materials has also increased 2-3 times compared to before.

By the end of 2024, the average poverty rate in the commune was more than 44.6% (old La Ee commune 40.28%, Cho Chun commune 49.09%). Currently, the whole commune still has 52 households subject to temporary and dilapidated houses being removed, more than half of whom are hesitant to receive money because if they build houses, they cannot guarantee the source of wood and sand.

Mr. Porong A Doc, Chairman of the People's Committee of La Ee commune, said that the most difficult problem the commune is facing in the program of eliminating temporary and dilapidated houses is the source of construction materials.

Although living in the mountains, people cannot exploit sand and wood locally to build houses, while the cost of transporting materials to the site is very expensive.

Not to mention, people do not have cash to buy because the commune cannot provide all the money to people (only half, when 50% of the house is completed, the remaining amount will be transferred) causing some households to register to remove temporary houses but when the money comes, they refuse to accept it because they are afraid that it will not be enough, leading to debt.

“According to the policy, the temporary housing must be eliminated by September 2025. This is a very difficult problem. Of course, the commune will increase encouragement and propaganda for people to try to implement it. The locality hopes that the superiors will consider creating favorable conditions and mechanisms for people to exploit local materials such as wood and sand to build houses because people do not exploit them for commercial trading,” Mr. A Doc proposed.