Work on widening to 2 lanes the over 6.2 km-long former single-lane emergency tunnel which lies parallel to the existing 2-lane Hai Van Tunnel is likely to fall behind the schedule due to some difficulties in site clearance rising during the work.

Matters relating site clearance need to be resolved as soon as possible

The 7,295 billion VND project under the Hai Van Pass is divided into 2 stages, being financed on the build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis.

The expansion aims to accommodate increasing traffic on the trans-Viet Nam National Highway No 1.
The 1st stage, which started in April 2016, focuses on upgrading the existing main Hai Van Tunnel and a section of the National Highway 1A.

Starting from December 2016, the 2nd stage of the project involves expanding the over 6.2 km-long emergency tunnel, which lies parallel to the existing main tunnel, into a 2-lane tunnel, and building a new 2.1 km-long stretch of road to Thua Thien-Hue Province’s Lang Co Town, and a 4.3 km-long roadway leading to Da Nang.

The overall project also includes a rescue centre, fire fighting equipment, and toll collection point.

The whole large-scale project is scheduled to have been completed in June 2020.

The Deo Ca Investment JSC from Viet Nam, which is now headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, is the project’s developer.

Illegal housing construction has adversely affected the handover of the site to the project

To date, a total of 3,500m out of the 6,292m in length of the single-lane emergency tunnel have been dug for its expansion.

About 38% of the construction of overpasses and approach roads to the tunnel has been completed.

However, there are some obstacles to the progress of site clearance, adversely affecting the handover of the site for the project.

In reality, some affected families which are continuously asking for resettlement land have built illegal houses intentionally on the forest land, whilst others have yet to hand over their forest land to the project.

To date, only 36.23ha out of the required 37.45ha of land have been cleared for the project, and only 9.08 billion VND out of the 20.5 billion VND, reaching 44.29%, has been disbursed for site clearance work.

As a result, the entire site clearance work has failed to meet the final completion deadline of 31 December 2017 as required by the Prime Minister in April 2017.

During his recent inspection visit to the project site, municipal People’s Committee Standing Vice Chairman Dang Viet Dung asked concerned units to accelerate the site clearance progress, with focus on encouraging the remaining affected families to hand over land for the project.

If they do not agree, compulsory forest land acquisition must be carried out, and be completed by late this month.

The city leader also asked the Lien Chieu District People’s Committee to establish a force to protect the project site, and create favourable conditions for ensuring on-scheduled construction progress.