As many as 70,000 households in Vietnam’s capital city of Hanoi are living without fresh water after the water pipeline from Da River broke again on June 17, the seventh time since the system put into operation in 2008. Following the previous times, the Ministry of Construction has checked the incidents but yet made up the reasons. However, the investor, Vinaconex Clean Water JSC attributed the incidents to weak geology but local experts said that it was caused by substandard pipeline which was imported from China. To ensure better water supply, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung approved a credit package worth $230 million from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to build a water system using water from Da river to serve residents in Hanoi’s outlying districts. (Lao Dong – Labor June 19 p3)
