Water pollution and rescuing ‘dead rivers’ have been major issues of concern of National Assembly deputies when discussing the draft law on water resources.

Trang A Duong, a National Assembly deputy from Ha Giang, said that in order to ensure national water resource security, it is necessary to pay attention to controlling and revitalizing depleted and polluted water resources. The draft law needs to clearly specify the responsibility of ministries, branches and localities in preventing and fighting against degradation, depletion and pollution of water resources.

Regarding the revitalization of water resources, many rivers and streams that are the sources of water providing water for daily life, production and creating ecological landscapes have been seriously polluted and depleted. They are called ‘dead rivers’. Reviving dead rivers is an extremely important and urgent task.

The draft law supplements the regulation on recovering water resources. The problem is that this requires huge expenses, while the state budget is limited. Duong has asked to carry out further studies to find a reasonable financial mechanism for the activities, suggesting that there should be policies to attract institutions and individuals to take part in projects on recovering rivers.

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Xuan, a National Assembly deputy from Binh Duong, said that clean water should be seen as a kind of special food and commodity which has a direct impact on human health and essential activities. In Vietnam, the number of households that access tap water is only 52 percent (84.2 percent in urban areas and 34.8 percent in rural areas).

A report by the Ministry of Health showed that there are 37 ‘cancer villages’ in Vietnam, of which 10 villages suffer from heavy water pollution, an alarming level.

“People have the right to access clean water and the government takes responsibility for people’s demand for clean water,” Xuan said.

The State needs to have plans to invest, develop and manage the clean water supply system, develop inter-commune, inter-district, inter-provincial and inter-regional water supply systems.

Pham Van Hoa, a National Assembly deputy from Dong Thap, said warned that Vietnam’s natural water resources are declining, while the environment pollution is getting more serious. Therefore, he asked to set more policies on making investments in water reservoirs and dams, restricting the building of hydropower dams, utilizing water recycling and converting sea water into fresh water.

Tran Thuong