Rubbish bins are to be installed on 11 major streets in Ho Chi Minh City’s districts 1, 3 and 10 this month, municipal People’s Committee’s Deputy Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Thu Ha said Sunday.
Local authorities are also planning to build public restrooms throughout the city.
People caught violating street sanitary codes would be severely fined, Ha said.
Official negligence
Deputy chairman of the HCMC Fatherland Front Committee, Le Hieu Dang, said the public was not always to blame for dirty streets.
On many streets, people could not help littering because there were no public rubbish bins, he said.
“Not one can be seen even on Mac Dinh Chi Street where the Fatherland Front Committee is headquartered.”
Several representatives from District 1 agreed.
They said most people wanted to keep their streets clean but a lack of trash bins and restrooms made it difficult to do so.
“We have to blame ourselves first before dumping it all on our citizens,” said a representative from District 1’s Tan Dinh Ward.
Dang said local authorities were also deficient when it came to preventing shop-owners from encroaching on the sidewalks.
Dang said Dinh Cong Trang Street residents once accused ward authorities with receiving “fees” from a cake shop to allow it encroach on the street.
“I questioned ward officials who said they did collect the fees for the ward budget,” he said.
The People’s Committee’s vice chairwoman Le Thi Hong Phuong promised to put a stop to the practice.
“We cannot let a little addition to our ward budget make us forget to enforce our clean street codes,” Phuong said.
Inefficient enforcement
District 1’s chief construction inspector, Thai Duc Do, said it was difficult to enforce the city’s street codes as, except for police, other inspectors could not fine violators on the spot.
Instead, they could only keep violators’ identity papers and request them to pay a fine later at ward authorities’ offices.
Fines were also too low to deter future offenses, Do said.
Nguyen Thi Thu Ha admitted fines were too low but said not only the local police, but construction inspectors at all levels were authorized to issue fines on the spot.
She said the problem was not a question of authorization but whether local authorities took pains to do what they could do to make the streets clean.
Ha promised to increase inspection forces citywide to better enforce street codes.
Nguyen Minh Hoa, head of the Department of Urban Studies from the HCMC University of Social Sciences and Humanities, suggested focusing on specific goals every year rather than having too many and achieve nothing.
“Each office or street should only aim to solve one important issue a year,” he said.
“Developing a clean and civilized habit does not take one or two years, but many.”
Reported by Duc Trung
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