Dozens of houses built illegally on forestry land

Dozens of houses have been built on the forestry land in Lam Dong Province's Duc Trong District illegally while the local authorities failed to deal with the issue.

Dozens of houses have been built on the forestry land in Lam Dong Province's Duc Trong District illegally while the local authorities failed to deal with the issue.

   

Illegal village formed in Lam Dong

Phuong Nam Ecotourism JSC is managing 355ha of forestry land in Hiep An Commune. However, 10% of the land has been encroached upon. Nguyen Duc Phuc, director of Phuong Nam Ecotourism JSC, said many people had encroached upon the land and built, transferred and sold houses illegally there. Even though they had noticed the problem very early and filed complaints to the authorities, they hadn't received any feedback.

As a result, a small village of 50 houses was formed overtime with roads and an electricity network.

"We filed complaints to many places but the buck was passed from one to another. The provincial authorities appointed the district authorities to deal with this case. The district authorities appointed the communal authorities and nothing was dealt with," Phuc said. "I heard that state employees also bought houses there. I don't know exactly who."

After the case was exposed to the media, on October 28, Lam Dong Province People's Committee asked related agencies and Duc Dong District People's Committee to inspect and deal with the violators. At the time, the houses were deserted. The local authorities said they were unable to identify the violators.

On December 10, three houses were dismantled. Le Nguyen Hoang, vice chairman of Duc Trong People's Committee said they would continue to dismantle the rest of the houses no matter if they can identify the owners or not.

"We'll keep calling for the owners to remove their own houses. If they fail to comply, we'll remove the houses," he said.