The path of smuggled land
Regarding the illegal land exploitation site in the cajuput forest area in Cap Bac village (Vinh Cap commune, Vinh Linh district, Quang Tri province) in the previous article, the group of reporters from Lao Dong Newspaper continued to follow the trucks carrying soil.
At about 2:10 p.m. on February 18, the truck with license plate 74C-101.40 left the illegal soil mining site and quickly joined the traffic flow on National Highway 1A.
At 14:31, the car turned left onto Pham Van Dong Street (Ho Xa Town, Vinh Linh District) and headed straight to a housing construction site opposite house number 23 Ngo Quyen. After a few reversals, at 14:37 the car began raising the hydraulic Bench and releasing soil to the parking lot. By 2:40 p.m., the entire volume of soil had been dumped into this project.
Less than 30 minutes later, the truck with license plate 73H-0176 left the mining site, heading towards Quang Binh province. At3, the car arrived at the area behind Xun Nhu dealers (sen Thuy commune, Le Thuy district, Quang Binh province) and dumped soil there. Observing the situation, the reporter found a large amount of soil with a color similar to the illegally exploited soil in the cajuput forest of Chap Bac village at the gathering site.
Posing as a person who needs to buy land to level, the reporter directly contacted the subjects exploiting illegal land. The price of each cubic meter of golden sand exploited at the sandbank is 55,000 VND. If the goods were delivered to Ho Xa town, this figure would increase to VND95,000/m3. A subject at the mining site said: "Selling at the site, we are responsible for scooping it onto the vehicle. If you want to transport it to the location, the price is higher because it costs more transportation".
This price is equivalent to legal land filling, although the origin is completely illegal.
What did the local leaders say?
According to the People's Committee of Vinh Linh district, up to this point, in Vinh Chap commune, no land mine has been licensed for exploitation.
Mr. Vo Van Tuan - Chairman of Vinh Chap Commune People's Committee affirmed that there is no situation of land exploitation for sale in the area.
According to Mr. Vo Van Tuan, in the commune, there are more than 1,000 hectares of planted forests belonging to the Viet Duc forest planting project implemented since 1998. Each household participating in the project has planted from 1 hectare to 2 hectares of forest on land managed by the commune, after which the people have been granted a land use right certificate.
The forest land area is mostly golden sand, suitable for leveling and leveling works, so there has been a situation where people have taken advantage of leveling land after exploiting the forest. But now the land is flat, there are not many more such conditions.
"There is a situation where people take advantage of one or two vehicles to fill ponds or build houses, if they do more, they will be handled immediately. There is no such thing as exploiting land to sell. In 2021, we discovered a case of excavating golden sand for sale, and have imposed administrative penalties. There is no such situation now" - Mr. Vo Van Tuan affirmed.
Although Mr. Tuan affirmed that there was "no" illegal land exploitation, according to the actual records of Lao Dong Newspaper reporters, not only one but many trucks carrying soil brazenly left the exploitation site, moving on National Highway 1A without any obstacles. The transportation of land from Quang Tri to Quang Binh shows that this activity is carried out systematically, not a done-it-all by people to take advantage of excess land as said by local leaders.
In addition, on many areas of planted forests that were previously land managed by the commune, now owned by the people, there are countless locations where the topsoil was stripped away.
