VietNamNet Bridge - The Hanoi authorities cannot use land for much-needed schools because hundreds of land plots have been left idle or used for wrong purposes.

Head of the Culture & Social Affairs Committee of the Hanoi People’s Council Nguyen Thi Thuy said this is because investors still want to hold land and don’t want to hand it over to the local authorities.

In 2012, the Hanoi authorities approved a plan on developing the school network in Hanoi, from nursery schools to vocational schools. The city has been implementing the plan since then. 

Hanoi has taken drastic measures to ease the overloading. New state-owned preschools have been built in six wards, where there was no school in the past. 

However, as Thuy admitted, the overloading still exists. Though the city’s leaders have realized the reasons behind this, the problem still cannot be settled. Tien Phong’s reporters, in a mini survey, have found that nearly 100 school projects are still in ‘pending’ status.

According to Thuy, the city’s authorities checked the land fund in urban areas and asked the urban areas’ developers to hand over the land to the local authorities to build state-owned schools. This was done well in Viet Hung urban area. 

However, in other areas, the developers do not want to hand over the land and do not want to build schools themselves.

In fact, a lot of residential quarters remain empty though apartments have been delivered by developers to buyers. Since there is no resident, the investors don’t want to build schools.

The Hanoi authorities cannot use land for much-needed schools because hundreds of land plots have been left idle or used for wrong purposes.

Most of the pending school projects are non-state owned school projects. 

However, some people disagreed with Thuy’s opinion that residential quarters’ investors are not building schools because of few residents. In fact, there are many densely populated residential quarters, but there is no school. As a result, parents have to send their children to the schools in other districts far from their houses.

In reply, Thuy said that investors want to build schools if they can see demand. However, the investors may think that building schools is not urgent work.

She went on to say that the plan to develop schools must be implemented to all parties’ benefits. Learners need to have schools to go to, while investors can make profits and the school development must go in accordance with the socio-economic development plan.

Thuy said that the number of students in every class at the schools in Hanoi does not exceed the permitted level. Under the current regulations, there are 35-40 students at maximum in a standard class. The real number of students may be higher at many schools, but it must not be too high.

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