With a length of nearly 32 km, Tham Luong - Ben Cat - Rach Nuoc Len canal flows through 7 districts including District 12, Binh Tan, Tan Phu, Tan Binh, Go Vap, Binh Thanh and Binh Chanh district.
The renovation project has a total investment of up to VND8,200 billion, supported by the central budget (VND4,000 billion) and the rest from the Ho Chi Minh City budget.
Construction started in February 2023, and the project includes items such as building concrete embankments on both banks, dredging the canal bed, building 7-12 m wide roads along both sides, installing drainage, lighting, and tree systems, along with 19 drainage culverts, 12 boat docks, and three connecting bridges.
Ho Chi Minh City has planned to complete the project by April 30, 2025.
However, according to the Management Board of Ho Chi Minh City Urban Infrastructure Construction Investment Project (investor), the construction progress has only reached 37.9% after nearly two years of implementation, facing many major challenges.
The most significant difficulty the project encountered was the lack of a dumping site for soil and mud from the canal dredging process. Initially, the planned locations for storing soil and mud were in Binh Tan and Go Vap districts and the Da Phuoc waste treatment area in Binh Chanh district. However, these locations encountered opposition from residents and management agencies, forcing the construction units to temporarily store mud and soil right at the construction site. This not only hindered acceptance and capital disbursement but also slowed down the implementation progress.
To solve this problem, the investor said that the mud from the project does not harm the environment and proposed to reuse it for other public works in the city.
The investor also proposed to transfer mud to other areas that need to be filled, to avoid wasting resources and meet project progress.
Land clearance work also faces many challenges. Some areas have completed land clearance, but there are still 21 cases of re-encroachment in Binh Thanh, Binh Tan, District 12, Go Vap and Binh Chanh districts.
The existence of these households hinders continuous construction, especially when it comes to ensuring the safety of technical infrastructure systems such as power lines, transformer stations and telecommunication cables.
The investor has proposed that the People's Committees of the districts quickly coordinate to reclaim the site, and at the same time called on the technical infrastructure management units to relocate and rearrange the underground power and cable systems to minimize construction interruptions.
The supply of construction materials such as sand and stone is also in short supply and prices are rising, causing great financial pressure on contractors. In addition, the rainy season with high tides in Ho Chi Minh City has forced many construction projects to temporarily stop, further delaying progress.
During the implementation process, the design documents encountered many shortcomings due to complicated geology and inadequate traffic connections. This required adjustments to some items to suit the reality. Notably, the project's contingency costs were low, unable to meet unexpected arising issues.
With the current situation, in 2024, the project was assigned 3,400 billion VND for disbursement, but the investor is expected to be able to disburse only about 1,028 billion VND (equivalent to 30.23%) with problems related to the sludge storage area that must be resolved promptly in November. The remaining capital must undergo capital reduction adjustment procedures.
