In recent years, the production of brooms from reed, or bong say in Vietnamese, in Con Nho Village in the Mekong Delta province of An Giang has been growing faster than ever with rising output and export to some regional nations, especially to Cambodia and Thailand.
Villagers make brooms
In recent years, the production of brooms from reed, or bong say in Vietnamese, in Con Nho Village in the Mekong Delta province of An Giang has been growing faster than ever with rising output and export to some regional nations, especially to Cambodia and Thailand.
Several broom making facilities in the village say Cambodian and Thai customers prefer local reed sweepers. These facilities often see orders doubling during the Lunar New Year holiday, or Tet.
Pham Thi Bich Tuyen, the owner of a broom manufacturing facility says her facility daily turns out 2,000-3,000 brooms and exports 39,000-42,000 units to Cambodia a month. Con Nho Village also supplies its products to other cities and provinces such as HCMC, Vinh Long and Dong Thap, among others.
From late June, local folk of Con Nho Village travel to some cities and provinces such as HCMC, Long An and Ca Mau where reed is abundant. After that, villagers get rid of leaves and dry plain reeds before shipping them back to the village.
From early October onwards when reed grows old and tough enough, locals return to their hometown for a new season of reed broom production.
A single reed is divided into smaller branches. Then these branches are bound into clusters. As many as 15 clusters are combined together to make a broom.
Handles are made of bamboo with a bunch of 100 units priced at VND100,000-VND120,000. Ten reed sweepers are grouped into a bunch for delivery.
Prices depend on the weight of each type. If a kilogram of reed is sufficient to produce two brooms, each will cost VND30,000-40,000. Meanwhile, if a kilo is used to make three to four sweepers, prices will range from VND17,000 to VND20,000 per unit.
SGT/VNN
