As the carnival atmosphere spreads in Ho Chi Minh City to celebrate Tet, the Lunar New Year, there are a few areas untouched by the gaiety.
For residents in the disadvantaged hamlets of district 4 and 8, life is a daily struggle to make ends meet, and the celebrations elsewhere are unreal.
Districts 4 and 8 are not far from downtown HCM City, where the festive atmosphere is the strongest, but they have been home for a long time to several slums were poor laborers reside.
Houses in the main streets of District 8 are spacious and luxurious, but in the small alleys where the poor live, accommodations are tiny and constructed with scrap building materials like carton boxes, iron sheets and pieces of wood. Crowded with people severely cramped for space, residents spend more time sitting outside their houses.
The noise, airlessness and disgusting smells from blackened canals is suffocating, and things get worse when the hamlets are inundated after rains.
Thousands of local people live in such makeshift houses on stilts at the foot of the Nguyen Tri Phuong Bridge and the Hiep An 1 Bridge.
Six members of Huynh Van Thoi’s household live in a four square meter “house” near the Hiep An Bridge. He has to bend low to enter the wooden cabin. Family members take their bowls out to find a place to eat.
Nguyen Thi Dieu in District 4’s Ben Van Don Street shares Thoi’s plight. Her eight square meter dwelling houses seven people, so she unrolls sleeping mats for her kids in the night and cooks outside on the path.
Poverty also renders these residents vulnerable to diseases and social evils, particularly because they tend to get no education.
Sixty-six year old Huynh Thi Muoi of District 8, despite her illness and old age, has to eke out a living by collecting.
She lost two of her four sons to drug addiction. She said that unemployed young men in her hamlet were prone to get involved with trading and abusing drugs, making the area rife with crime.
The illnesses of parents also force children and youth to quit school, as does the need to look after siblings while their parents go to different parts of the city to find work.
The District 8 People’s Committee last Tuesday announced it would give 101 resettlement houses in the Tan My apartment building in district 7 to households living around the U Cay canal in wards 9, 10 and 11. Speaking at the ceremony, the city People’s Committee Chairman, Le Hoang Quan, lauded the administrations of districts 7 and 8 and the Saigon Real Estate Corporation for the speedy implementation of the project, helping people to settle their lives during the Tet holiday season.
Thousands of poor residents of district 4 and 8 are hoping for similar assistance to help them climb out of abject poverty and misery.
