Collecting handmade waste on the bay with a revenue of thousands of billions of VND
Although the amount of garbage in Ha Long Bay has decreased significantly compared to before, garbage is still a nightmare for tourists visiting Ha Long Bay.
Floating garbage can be found anywhere in Ha Long Bay, from the coast to the middle of the sea and tourist attractions on the bay.
Occasionally, small wooden boats, or bamboo boats, with workers diligently holding the racket, dropping each piece of foam, bottle, ball bag... onto the boat. But there are times when there is a lot of garbage, after being collected and returned, where did the garbage come from?
Ha Long Bay is vast, has small ships and rudimentary collection equipment, so garbage collection is very difficult.
Currently, the collection of garbage in Ha Long Bay is assigned to a number of companies to carry out, through bidding. However, each company is only responsible for collecting garbage in certain areas, such as coastal areas or tourist destinations, not the entire Ha Long Bay. The bay is about 1,153km2 wide, of which the World Natural Heritage Site recognized by UNESCO has an area of about 434km2 with 775 islands.
This causes garbage in other units' areas, or in areas not yet assigned to any unit, to drift into areas that have just been collected.
According to a representative of a company participating in collecting garbage in Ha Long Bay, to ensure Ha Long Bay is cleaner, it is advisable to hire a garbage collection company in the entire Ha Long Bay or a larger area, instead of dividing it into small areas and assigning it to a unit to take general responsibility for " pay when there is no garbage". However, this requires spending a huge budget.
Another key point is that the winning bidder for the garbage collection in Ha Long Bay must sign a long-term contract so that businesses can confidently invest in modern machinery and technology equipment.
Inadequacies in bidding
A representative of the Ha Long Bay Management Board said that according to regulations, the contract can only be signed for one year; after one year, the bidding will be re-opened and the signing will continue for one more year.
Mr. Nguyen Tuan Anh - representative of Quang Ninh Green Tree Joint Stock Company - one of the garbage collection units in Ha Long Bay - informed that the first-year contract is very inadequate, the unit has repeatedly proposed to sign for a long-term contract but the authorities explained that it cannot be done differently. Because they only sign a one-year contract, no unit dares to invest in ships, equipment, and modern technology to collect garbage, because if next year they do not win the contract, what is the use of those ships and equipment?
According to calculations, the modern garbage collection fleet alone must be up to tens of billions of VND and it will take many years to hope for capital recovery. However, because they only signed a contract for one year, the winning bids for garbage collection in Ha Long Bay only invested in buying small wooden boats or renting wooden boats.
According to Lao Dong, the winning bids for garbage collection in Ha Long Bay are all familiar faces because this is not an easy part to do, making other companies not interested. However, even though they know they may win the bids for the next bid, there is no guarantee, so no unit dares to invest heavily in this work.
