Stinking oil facility has locals sleeping in face masks in central Vietnam

Now all they can do is to wear face masks while they sleep as the facility is just 200 meters away from residential areas and three schools.

Local residents have filed numerous complaints about the oil facility but local authorities have been largely unhelpful.

Authoriteies have shut down the facility several times, but eacht time it quickly resumed operations.

"On May 22, we asked Lan, the owner, to voluntarily shut down the facility and asked authorities for it to be moved away from residential areas," district police said. However, the facility is still operating as normal at present.

Locals suspect the facility is being "protected" by local authorities because the owner rents the land from the deputy chairman of the commune's People's Committe.

The stench lard at the facility. Photo by VnExpress/A.T

Disgrunted residents have even damaged the facility and verbally attacked the owner, but nothing seems to work. 

"The owner, Lan, purchases tons of lard from various sources and stores it in her house for several days before processing it. Locals have to wear face masks while they sleep while children and people with asthma horribly suffer from the stench," local resident Dang Tuyen said.

Oil being processed. Photo by VnExpress/A.T

Hong Quoc Cuong, chairman of the district's People's Committee, confirmed that the facility is illegal.

"Authorities in the commune have broken the law by allowing the facility to operate. We have set up an inspection group to deal with the situation and taken the commue's authorities off the case," he said.