Vietnam to Spend VND1.4T to Ease Pollution at Handicraft Villages by 2015

The Vietnamese Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources said that it would carry out a project on coping with environmental pollution in handicraft villages in the 2012-2015 period, costing about VND1.4 trillion ($67.3 million). The project will target villages where pollution causes big threats to human’s health, the Saigon Giai Phong newspaper reported. Accordingly, eight kinds of handicraft villages including those specializing in paper, plastic production and recycling, weaving and dying, slaughtering, food processing, leather-used jewelry manipulation will be zoned for environmental protection. Environmental pollution in craft villages remains a thorny problem in Vietnam where is home to 2,790 villages, employing around 20 million employees. However, the majority of the villages have no proper waste treatment systems. (Saigon Giai Phong –Saigon Liberation Feb 14 p3)