Traditional trade villages are not only one of the typical cultural traits that need to be preserved, but also an important contributor to socioeconomic development and rural development. They generate incomes and improve livelihoods for villagers. However, the development and preservation of trade villages entails seriously alarming environmental pollution.
According to statistics, trade villages usually concentrate large river deltas like the Red River Delta, which includes Hanoi, Bac Ninh, Thai Binh and Nam Dinh provinces. Some trade villages are famous nationwide like Bat Trang pottery village (Hanoi), Chuong Ngo pearl-inlaying village (Hanoi), Van Phuc silk village (Ha Dong district, Hanoi), Dong Ky village (Bac Ninh), Dong Ho painting village (Bac Ninh), Ke Mon jewellery village (Thua Thien - Hue), Non Nuoc fine-arts stone village (Danang).
Currently, traditional trade villages in Vietnam are raising concerns over environmental pollution, mainly air pollution, water pollution and noise pollution.
Air environment is deteriorating in many traditional trade villages, especially those making wooden furniture, making fine-arts stone and processing foods and agricultural products. Water environment is worsening in some dyeing villages, mattress weaving villages, food processing villages, and slaughtering villages, etc. dyes and sulphur-containing compounds used in cloth bleaching in dyeing villages, and wastewater, COD, BOD5, NH4 + and coliform contents exceed limits by far are directly discharged into the environment. Surface water in many villages is found containing toxics in excess of limits by 2-3 times. In addition, continuous operations of machinery and equipment are causing noise pollution.
Causes to this reality are attributed to small production scale of business units in traditional trade villages. In some villages, there is one or a few production units located within residential areas. Therefore, trade villages also pose potential risks of occupational diseases to workers and surrounding people.
Besides, qualifications of workers in trade villages are limited. They are mainly manual workers with simple on-site training for daily jobs and they are thus lack of awareness of environmental protection. Many villages do not pay attention to building technical infrastructures for environmental protection, lack means to ensure good working environments like lighting, air-conditioning systems, ventilators, smoke and fume collectors, dust collectors, and wastewater treatment facilities. As a result, pollution is worsening there.
To protect the sustainable development and reduce environmental pollution of trade villages, it is necessary to complete instructive documents for trade village development in association with environmental preservation and encourage production facilities to invest in modern technology and build waste treatment systems.
Besides, provinces and cities should have policies and mechanisms to encourage villages to protect the surroundings like providing financial support for infrastructure construction, including the installation and construction of waste and wastewater treatments and landfills for solid wastes. They also encourage production facilities to apply new production methods, focusing on cleaner, energy-saving, environment-friendly ones.
In implementing the National Programme for Labour Safety and Sanitation in the 2011-2015 period, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) is one of the key coordinators of the Project 3 - Informing, educating, training, advising and supporting technical measures to labour safety and sanitation. VCCI is assigned to popularise, train and advise labour safety and sanitation improvements to VCCI-member small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The project is carried out by the Business Office for Sustainable Development, VCCI.
According to the programme, by 2015, every year, over 40,000 workers working in the environment with strict labour safety and sanitation requirements, 10,000 workers doing laborious, harmful and perilous jobs, 40,000 labour safety and hygiene staffs at enterprises will be trained of labour safety and sanitation. Over 10,000 households and cooperative groups, 1,000 villages, 5,000 cooperatives, 30,000 SMEs, and 2 million farmers will be informed of labour safety and hygiene.
Major activities will focus on raising awareness and responsibility of employers and employees in occupational safety and hygiene; and informing, training, advising and providing technical supports for determined groups.
Ha Thu
Vietnamese
