VietNamNet Bridge – The streets of Cu Chi, one of the poorest districts in HCM City, are some of the best lit in the city since residents contributed US$760,000 following the United Nations Development Programme's Viet Nam Energy Efficient Public Lighting project.

To Tu Nguyen, deputy head of the Cu Chi district People's Committee said it took two years to raise the money from residents and the local government matched it to upgrade the street lighting.

Because of its small budget for public lighting, the district started to raise money in 2004 to upgrade the 3,000 street lights that the City government had installed in the early 1990s.

Before then, the streets had been in darkness since 1975 except for outdoor lights on houses. Amazingly, about 90 per cent of Cu Chi residents supported the programme.

"There was no follow-up research to guage the social benefits resulting from the project but stealing and traffic accidents have reduced."

The district's deputy chairwoman said residents were pleased with the success of the public lighting project as it meant that lighting their property frontages was no longer their responsibility or they had been able to replace fluorescent or incandescent bulbs with more energy efficient ones.

The rural district now has more than 12,000 energy efficient public lamps, illuminating more than 500km of streets. The system has been handed to the city government to manage and operate. An engineer from HCM City Public Lighting Company said the number of public lights in Cu Chi was the same as a small city.

"We received strong support from residents for the project, though they were resistant at first. The poor families didn't have to contribute while their wealthier neighbours shouldered the extra costs," Nguyen said.

The district plans to gradually install solar powered street lamps to save electricity.

Nguyen Van Nuong, 62, a resident from the district's Thai My Commune, said he had supported the programme by contributing VND450,000 in installments. The wealthier families gave more, he said.

Residents of the district were already familiar with contributing to public projects. They were encouraged by the success of previous projects in irrigation and transportation.

"Resident have donated their land for irrigation and transportation projects and enjoyed the benefits of modern farming and roads. It raised the standard of living and helped them out of poverty," Nuong said, adding the living standard was three times better and the number of poor had dropped dramatically since the 90s.

Dao Xuan Lai, head of the Sustainable Development Cluster of the United Nations Development Programme, which offers technical support, design, and advises on building the system, said the model should be copied by other localities.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News