Trash piles up in central Vietnam as incinerator abandoned

The Hoa Loc waste incinerator project in Hau Loc District, costing over VND5.2 billion ($209,000) from the state budget, entered operations in 2018. The incinerator was designed to handle seven tons of trash a day.

However, locals said the incinerator has only been operating sporadically, and stopped in the past three months. Garbage has been piled up around the incinerator, becoming a haven for flies and vermin.

The entire incinerator site, spanning 3,000 m2, is now left abandoned in the middle of a field, without any worker or security guard tending to it. Some walls and fences have collapsed, causing trash to spill over people’s fields.

Trinh Xuan Han, chairman of Hoa Loc Commune, on Saturday said the incinerator stopped working because the machineries have been degraded and rendered inoperable.

Han said repairing and upgrading the incinerator would require resources that exceed the commune’s capabilities. For the near future, the commune would pay an environmental business to move the trash somewhere else, he said.

Hoa Loc Commune is home to around 13,000 people who discharge around 12,000 tons of trash every year.