Vietnam Can Treat 13% of Wastewater: Official

An official from the Vietnamese Ministry of Construction has said that the country’s wastewater treatment capacity can meet between 12% and 13% of the total discharged volume and the rest is directly released into the environment. Nguyen Hong Tien, head of the ministry’s Agency of Technical Infrastructure said that plants nationwide can treat roughly 890,000 cubic meters per day. The country targets to raise the capacity to 15%-20% by 2020 and improve the drainage capacity to 70% in big cities and the province’s capital cities, the official said. Commenting the weak treatment capacity, Doctor Nguyen Dinh Cung, head of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), said that the government and businesses should consider wastewater treatment a field that should pour money into to have better services for the development. So far, wastewater and waste treatment projects applying advanced technologies in Vietnam have been mostly invested by foreign companies. (Ttvn.vn Jan 10)