VietNamNet Bridge – For the last many years, residents in Tan Trieu commune of Thanh Tri district in general and the Trieu Khuc craft village, have been living in a seriously polluted environment on a… voluntary basis.

“We know that the job causes pollution. But how can we earn money if we give up the job? Meanwhile, the agricultural land has been narrowed,” said Do Sinh Cong, Chair of the Farmers’ Association in Tan Trieu commune.

In Tan Trieu is the commune where local residents do many handicraft careers such as brocade weaving, dyeing and thread manufacturing, waste material, feather collecting and recycling in Trieu Khuc village, or footwear production in Yen Xa commune.

In the commune, the jobs are called “sideline”, while the main job is growing rice. However, in fact, the sideline is the main source of income for local residents, In the last 10 years, many more other “sidelines” have been developed, including meal services and office leasing.

According to Chair of Tan Trieu commune Nguyen Duy Tuan, 1457 households out of 4867 households with 24,000 residents are living on handicrafts and trade services. About 600 households are living on collecting and recycling scrap materials, feather, weaving and making thread.

However, the jobs that bring money to Tran Trieu’s local residents also bring pollution to the living environment.

On the Gio Ga cemetery area in Trieu Khuc Village, there are tens of households collecting and processing chicken, duck and wild goose feather manually. All the workers at the workshops there classify feathers with their hands which were not protected with the gloves, and then bring the feathers to have dyed.

Those, who visited the area, would see with the eyes the seriously polluted environment. Terrible smell arose from the piles of feathers, while the feather dust hovered in the atmosphere; the waste water here is pitch black. The concrete road across the field area has been used by households as the field for dying feathers.

According to Trieu Thi Hien, one of the biggest feather collectors said that this is the traditional career in Trieu Khuc. Some households here have been following the career of feather collection and processing for the last four generations.

Several years ago, most of the households did the works right at their families. However, in recent years, as the land fund has been narrowed, the number of households doing that career has decreased gradually.

In order to ease the environment pollution, a lot of households have moved to neighboring localities to lease land to continue their works, while others move to the cemetery area in the commune. At present, a worker in Trieu Khuc can earn 180,000-200,000 dong a day.

In the cramped Trieu Khuc hamlet, one would hear the noisy sound from the plastic grinding machines. Dao Thi Chien, who has been collecting and recycling scrap materials for the last 12 years, said that the profits from the job has been decreasing due to the higher production costs and transport fee. However, she still follows the career, because this is the traditional job.

Chien said that in the past, nearly 30 households took this job. However, as the plastic recycling causes environment pollution, while processors do not have money to build waste water treatment system, many of the households have given up the job.

The report about the environment situation of the Tan Trieu commune showed that in 2011, tens of billions of dong were invested to build new the transport system and the water drainage system. However, the environment has not been improved, because the waste water from production workshops still keeps discharging directly to the canals.

Source: Tien phong