For over a month, dozens of households raising fish in cages along the banks of the Lo River in Ham Yen District have been struggling with the loss of their livelihoods. The river water suddenly dropped, the cages were swept down to the banks and lay in ruins, and all the fish died.
Sadly cleaning up the messy pile of cages, Mr. Pham Thanh Binh (Thai Hoa commune, Ham Yen district) suddenly became penniless.
Mr. Binh said: "The incident took place for more than a month now, now I can clean up.
According to Mr. Binh, in 2023, his family suffered a loss of nearly 1 billion due to the unusual death of Chien fish. After restocking, he decided to raise catfish on the Lo River. However, the hydroelectric plant discharged water deep enough to cause the cages to be swept away and damaged.
"This area has the most fish cages. My life also depends on raising fish in cages, but now it's all gone. I still owe the bank more than 200 million VND.
The water level suddenly dropped, the cages slid down from the edge of the bank, and all the fish were stranded and died. This has been going on for a long time but has not been resolved or handled to help the people. Life has become even more difficult now, and we don't know where to turn," Mr. Binh confided.
As one of the households that suffered the most damage, Ms. Vi Thi Binh - Head of Cho Tong village (Duc Ninh commune) said that all the dead fish were still left in the freezer and had not been eaten yet.
According to Ms. Binh, in early October, the river water level suddenly dropped sharply. Many fish cages were damaged, and all the fish were stranded and died. Many families lost their livelihoods in an instant, and it is not known when they will recover.
"Seeing that raising fish in cages on the Lo River was effective, my family also invested. At first, we made a profit because the fish were easy to sell, mainly specialty fish. However, in just one year, we lost everything.
At the end of 2023, the Chien fish in this area died en masse. Recently, the river dried up, the fish died again, and the cages were also severely damaged. Up to 6 families around here suffered losses. Along the riverbank area, the communes of Thai Hoa, Khanh An, and Duc Ninh were all affected," Ms. Binh said sadly.
According to Ms. Binh, now we have to wait for the water level to stabilize before starting over. All the effort and money have been swept away by the water. The sudden drop in the Lo River water level has left the entire riverbank area in disarray, causing a lot of damage. She hopes that the authorities will soon find the cause and come up with a solution to support cage fish farmers.
On November 16, speaking with a reporter from Lao Dong Newspaper, a leader of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Ham Yen district confirmed that at the end of 2023, there was a record of an unusual mass death of Chien fish. Regarding the incident of the Lo River's water level decreasing, which affected many cages, the locality is also making statistics, counting and finding solutions.
Some images recorded by PV:
