The prolonged drought combined with the more severe saline intrusion has caused many western provinces to be in the thirst for fresh water. To share these difficulties, many businesses in Binh Duong transported and provided free fresh water to people in order to alleviate difficulties, prevent acts of seeking profits by taking advantage of this situation and selling freshwater at high prices.
Biwase cooperates with local government to deliver free clean water to Ben Tre people.
Shipment of sentiments
While the whole country is worrying and fighting against the Covid-19, governments and people in many southwestern provinces must suffer the prolonged drought and saltwater intrusion with severe influence on the production and daily life of people. Surface water resources in Ben Tre, Tien Giang... are exhausted, thus cannot provide water to treatment plants and people. Binh Duong Water-Environment JSC (Biwase) quickly organized groups coming to many localities in Ben Tre province to survey the lack of fresh water here.
Tran Chien Cong, General Director of Biwase, said survey results showed the serious situation of fresh water shortage for daily life activities, especially water for drinking and cooking in many localities in Ben Tre. Hence, the company decided to increase the donated water volume up to three times more than the initial number of 20,000m3. "The company increased the water amount from 20,000 m3 to 60,000 m3", Mr. Cong said.
According to Mr. Cong, average cost to hire barges for water transfer is more than VND100 million. The entire expense of water transportation was donated by Biwase staff with the hope of sharing difficulties and relieving the thirst of Ben Tre people. These barges carried not only fresh water but also love and sympathy to Ben Tre people. This contributed to repelling acts of taking advantage of the difficult situation to sell water at unreasonable high prices, which was not guaranteed hygiene conditions and caused financial losses to people.
According to the Biwase leadership, the difficulty now is the transport of water must use small barges, thus the volume of each transport is not much to be distributed promptly to the people in affected areas. Therefore, Biwase will send container trucks to transport bottled drinking water to the elderly and functional forces in Ben Tre province. “Biwase is also working with some localities in Tien Giang province that are also in the same situation. "Based on the survey results, we will decide on the volume of supported water", said Mr. Cong.
Helping people to overcome difficulties
With a mutual affection spirit, Binh Duong businesses and people are turning towards the affected areas. Dai Nam Joint Stock Company visited people in Ben Tre province and donated more than 10,000 thirty-liter plastic cans to contain water, lent 3 tank trucks. "Dai Nam JSC bears all labor and fuel costs to transport fresh water to saline hamlets in Ben Tre province. In addition, the company also covered all expenses of building and installing RO water filtering system (according to US standards) in Ben Tre province", said Huynh Uy Dung, Chairman of Dai Nam JSC. The company also visited and surveyed the fresh water shortage of people in Binh Phu commune, Go Cong Tay district, Tien Giang province; then supported a 16m3 tank truck to carry fresh water daily to the people here; donated 10,000 plastic cans and drilled 3 wells 350m deep to get fresh water from underground vessels.
Although this company is suffering losses due to the closure of their theme park during the epidemic, their spirit of sharing difficulties with people in western provinces is praiseworthy. On the other hand, Mr. Cong said that 2020 was the year that Biwase had high expectation for growth. Therefore, many of their projects are invested and executed in this year. Due to the ongoing Covid-19, the production and business activities of enterprises in general and of Biwase in particular have been negatively impacted. However, Biwase staff upholds the spirit of solidarity and make every effort to overcome difficulties and fulfill the set targets and plan.
Hopefully, these supports of clean water to Ben Tre and Tien Giang people would help people in difficult areas have an urgent source of water to overcome this difficult time.
Reported by Minh Duy - Translated by Ngoc Huynh
