Japan firm's landslide concerns at Da Nang high-tech park gets ignored

Attending a meeting with the city's authorities on Wednesday, Niwa Ryo, director of Niwa Foundry Vietnam Co. Ltd, said after the historic rainfall in October last year, landslides caused soil and mud to flow over the company's factory inside the park in Hoa Vang District.

The company reported the situation to the Management Board of Da Nang Hi-Tech Parks and Industrial Parks and later built drainage itself to cope with the situation.

In October last year, Da Nang experienced historic flooding that inundated the entire city under 1.5 m of floodwater after it received 795 mm of rain overnight following storm Son Ca. The floods killed four people, and caused more than 200,000 households to lose power.

However, after another heavy rain on September 25 this year, the factory continued to suffer from the landslide, damaging the factory's equipment.

Niwa said the company had sent statements to related authorities to report the situation twice but so far had received no responses.

"We are concerned about the infrastructure at the high-tech park," he said.

Niwa Foundry Vietnam Co. Ltd is the first company to get license from Da Nang's government to build facility in the park.

Its factory is currently surrounded by several hills and vacant land plots.

Tran Van Ty, deputy head of the Management Board of Da Nang Hi-Tech Parks and Industrial Parks management board, said at the meeting that the rainfall on October 14, 2022 was three times higher than what the city's infrastructure could withstand.

He said that Da Nang High-Tech Park was located right next to the hillside in a mountainous region north of the city, and therefore, several businesses had been affected.

After the incident, the board had assigned the unit operating the park to use the maintenance budget of 2023 to dredge and clear the flow.

"Hopefully the same situation won't happen again in the future," Ty said, affirming that the situation only happened once during the historic rain a year ago.

But Niwa insisted that the situation had already happened again after the rainfall on September 25.

In conclusion, city chairman Le Trung Chinh said the board must take full responsibility.

He said it should have taken initiative to prepare the park's infrastructure instead of waiting for report from the company and handle the problem after that.

Established in 2010, the Da Nang Hi-tech Park covers nearly 1,230 hectares.

After the other two hi-tech parks in Hanoi and HCMC, it is the third one in the whole country.

As of March, the park had attracted 29 investment projects, including 16 domestic projects worth more than VND7 trillion (US$285 million) and 13 foreign-investment projects with a total registered capital of $607.7 million.