Nguyen Minh Ngoc, deputy head of Binh Tan’s board of compensation and clearance, said most of the graves have remained untouched and have not yet been claimed by anyone.

"We've been unable to find relatives of thousands of those buried at the cemetery," he said. "We'll exhume the bodies and cremate them if the families do not come forward, and no compensation will be paid in this case."

Covering over 53 hectares, Binh Hung Hoa is the biggest cemetery in HCM City with more than 70,000 graves, and was built before 1975.

In 2014, local authorities issued the decision to remove 54,000 graves which were situated on a total area of 40 hectares to build a shopping centre, parks and some public works. So far, some 60 percent of the affected graves have been relocated elsewhere.