People in the Mekong Delta – where severe drought and salinity occur, said this year’s drought is fierce and unprecedented, causing crops in many places to die, hundreds of thousands of households remain without fresh water.
Ben Tre is one of the localities most severely damaged by the saline and drought this year. According to the statistics of the provincial People’s Committee, saline intrusion in the dry season 2020 has seriously affected more than 3,000 hectares of rice area. In addition, more than 20,000 hectares of fruit trees also died, giving no harvest.
A person named B in Ben Tre said that this year’s drought and salinity intrusion was worse than in 2016.
“In 2016 was bad but we still had harvest,” B added.
According to people in Ben Tre, the salinity on Rach Bu canal, checked on Feb 23, was 2.4, and on the smaller channel, it was 1.85. That means the drought this year may be more serious than that in 2016 which was historical bad for decades.
As of mid-February 2020, the salinity of 2.50/00 has penetrated into Vinh Binh and Phu Phung communes of Cho Lach District, meaning that almost entired Ben Tre province has been surrounded by salt water. Salinity intensity, according to the Center of Meteorology and Hydrology Ben Tre, said that this year was higher than 2016 and the penetration was deeper.
In fact, in 2016 drought, people still planted rice in some fields, but in 2020, no fields were available for rice planting.
Rice growers in Ben Tre have been forced to find other jobs as their fields are not suitable for cropping.
The small ditch is located next to the deserted fields because of the salty drought in Ba Tri district, Ben Tre province, it seems that the dried up water will no longer be exploited, but thanks to this small ditch, some local people Phương still gleaned a few pairs of fish, lining her stomach through the day.
The people said that there was no way to save rice, so they had to switch to slapping ditches, catching fish, waiting for drought and salinity.
In this tragic context, many people were worried about unemployment.
One farmer said that if the drought and saltwater intrusion did not end, they had to go to other jobs, even to be porters.
He said: We have sought to work differently. We can get paid several hundreds of thousands a day.
In Phu Quy commune, Cai Lay district, Tien Giang province, a region specializing in durian trees, this year’s salty storm came quickly and soon caused people to be unable to keep up. According to district statistics, about 80% of the trees in the area are burnt because of lack of fresh water.
A resident in Phu Quy commune shared the difficulty: There is no water for crops. The government does not allow tap water to be used. Durian garden this year is considered a loss.
Due to the scarcity of fresh water during the drought, local authorities no longer allow people to take tap water for irrigation, but to save for domestic use.
Some people were forced to buy fresh water in other provinces to water to save their seedlings. Mr. Bay said that many families who have invested in Durian garden so much money so they had to hire a boat to buy water to irrigate their crops in order to save their investment.
He further explained: Water prices are different for 10, 20 and 30 cubic meters. They are very high and we could not afford.
Most people are worried that there is no more action. They said they were only looking forward to the rain. While it is only in the middle of the dry season, it will take 3 more months for the dry season to end there.
In Phu Quy commune, Cai Lay district, Tien Giang province, the local farmers are very frustrated because the authorities do not follow up and promptly notify the situation of saline intrusion to people and there is no quick solution, makes it now impossible to find fresh water.
Many people lamented that if the locality closed the sluice gate earlier, the amount of water in the horizontal canal could help people to hold on for a longer time to save their crops.
Mr. Bay in Cai Lay said: Strictly speaking, the local government does not support anything. When the salty water entered the field, they closed the sluices and it was too late. Now farmers can not irrigate anything.
At the time of a reporter of Radio Asia Free came to Tien Giang to survey the situation of mangrove, it was right at this time that the locality was constructing sluice gates.
As the local farmers said, the local government’s management was too late, causing their rice fields and orchards to die of thirst every day.
By the end of March, saline intrusion may remain high. Also in its announcement, the Ministry said that the solution to reduce salinity intrusion in March in the Mekong Delta is still only requiring provinces and cities to operate closed gates and irrigation works when salinity is excessive, and boost fresh water storage.
The ministry also identified that this saline intrusion could seriously affect the cultivated areas of fruit trees and people’s daily water.
In response to the ongoing drought and saline intrusion affecting the regions of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, the EU has provided Eur60,000 humanitarian aid to the most affected people.
The grant will provide direct assistance to 24,000 people in the most affected provinces in the region.
The grant will help the Vietnam Red Cross Association (VNRC) in providing safe drinking water, strengthening sanitation and health care activities for households that have been greatly affected due to lack of clean water. Disease prevention campaigns will be conducted to reduce the risks of water related diseases.
And journalist Manh Kim has also issued a serious warning that if the Luang Prabang Dam is expected to be born with the “contribution” of Vietnam’s own investment, the Mekong Delta will undoubtedly become more tragic.
The New York Times (Feb 15, 2020) said that with more than 10 dams planned to be built across the lower Mekong along with hundreds of other dams in tributaries, the lifeline of 60 million people is being threatened, not only farmers, fishermen, but also the rich and powerful people who benefit from hydroelectricity. The depletion of sediments and the abnormal flow of water cause farmers to use more chemical fertilizers and pesticides, causing even more harm to the environment and humans.
In particular, the Luang Prabang dam project, scheduled to be built this year, will officially kill the lives of people in Vietnam’s western region.
In a letter to the National Assembly deputies of the western provinces in January 2020, Mekong Delta expert, Mr. Ngo The Vinh – author of “Cuu Long river runs dry, the East Sea tensions rise” – wrote: “Only more than three months is the expiry of the Pre-Reference (10-2019 – 4-2020) process for the Luang Prabang project. Without immediate action and drastic changes from Vietnam, the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Luang Prabang Dam will take place in April 2020. It will be a day of mourning for all 20 million residents of 13 Vietnamese western provinces, but the mourning bandage is wrapped on the people’s heads made by the Vietnamese State!”
The communist government of Vietnam has turned the prosperous western into a place of crop failure; rice, vegetables and fruit trees could not survive; shrimp and fish die out as mangroves and dry-bottomed canals seriously lack fresh water. This is a crime that will occur in Vietnam’s history.
Hai Yen from Ha Noi – Thoibao.de (Translated)
