Ho Chi Minh City discharges 80 per cent of sewage untreated

Jul 29, 2010, 9:49 GMT

Hanoi - Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City have found 80 per cent of household sewage is being discharged directly into rivers and canals, an official said Thursday.

'This is the main reason making rivers and canals in Ho Chi Minh City polluted,' said Nguyen Van Nga, head of the division for water resource management in the Ho Minh City Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

Nguyen Trung Viet, head of the division for solid waste management said between 200 and 240 cubic meters of sewage was being dumped untreated into public water sources every day.

Ho Chi Minh City has about 125 to 150 tankers collecting toilet waste to take to processing plants, but residents are unwilling to use them.

The tankers also contribute to the problem. Last week, the city's environmental police caught a tanker illegally dumping toilet waste into the water.

Police said it was hard to catch waste dumpers red-handed because it took only three or four minutes to completely empty a tanker.

Ho Minh City environment department said it planned to use global positioning system technology to monitor the movements of waste tankers. Electronic chips would be fitted to all tankers by early next year.