Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh has asked the southern province of Dong Nai to focus on completing ground clearance to speed up the progress of the first phase of the Long Thanh International Airport project.

 

The People’s Committee of Dong Nai was requested to promptly implement compensation, support and resettlement for local residents in the project site as scheduled.

 

According to the provincial People’s Committee, Dong Nai has to conduct ground clearance on total area of 5,000 hectares for the project, including 2,532 hectares for its first phase.

 

So far, Dong Nai has handed over 1,284 hectares of cleared land to the Southern Airports Authority, or 51 percent of total area for the first phase of the project. However, the Ministry of Transport held that the ground clearance activities for the project remained slow.

 

The People’s Committee of Long Thanh district attributed the situation to problems in compensation for a number of difficult cases, including those having the land transferred and presented with handwriting agreements, along with COVID-19 impacts. It has received guidance from the provincial People’s Committee to deal with the issues.

 

According to the Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), the Long Thanh International Airport will be built in three phases over three decades. In the first phase, one runway with a length of 4,000m, taxiways, an apron, and a passenger terminal with other auxiliary works sprawling 373,000 sq.m will be built to serve 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of cargo each year.

 

The airport, which was expected to cost 336.63 trillion VND (14.5 billion USD), is designed to have four runways, four passenger terminals, and other auxiliary facilities to ensure a capacity of 100 million passengers and 5 million tonnes of cargo a year by 2040.

 

Located 40km to the east of Ho Chi Minh City, the Long Thanh International Airport is expected to relieve overloading at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in the southern hub, now the country’s largest airport./.

VNA