One year ago, the sea environmental incident caused by Formosa affected the production of local people in four central coastal provinces of Vietnam. The sea has now become safe and fishermen have started going out to sea.

In April 2016, hundreds of tonnes of fish washed ashore in four central Vietnamese provinces Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue.

In June 2016, Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp, a subsidiary of Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics, took responsibility for the incident. The company agreed to pay 500 million USD to compensate local people’s economic losses, supporting them to find new jobs and treating the polluted sea environment. 

One year after the incident, at Cửa Việt fishing port in the central province of Quang Tri, trading activities are bustling again.

Phan Thanh Hung, a ship owner, said nearly three tonnes of fish he had caught were sold out. Since the lunar New Year, he went out to sea six times and all of the batches yielded high profit.

Currently, the locality has nearly 540 fishing vessels, of which about 110 go deep-sea fishing.

Severely hit by the sea environmental incident one year ago, the sea in Triệu An commune has been revived. The Cua Viet port is now full of ships again.

VNA