Standing behind a house lying on the banks of the Tien River, father and son LVPh., 70 years old, live in Phu Thuan B commune, TP. Hong Ngu, Dong Thap province expressed concern when the landslide deepened. Not far away, scorpions are still plying the sand in the river. Households next to Mr. Ph. left home because of the landslide. The remains are the broken floor and some furniture in the rubble. A few meters away from the landslide river bank, two graves of their loved ones had not yet been relocated.
Mr. LVU, 42 years old, the youngest son of Mr. Ph, used to work as a manager for a sand mine, once had a grudge with the people because he was accused of causing landslides, now his family becomes the victim of the accident. landslides “encircled”.
Looking at the squealing leggings, pulling the sand bucket out of the water, U. said: “The profits of the sand mines are terrible.” To help us understand better, U. explained: “Not only exploiting reserves cheats, mines also cheat the mining scope. For example, the license gives you an A, but you will go through the surrounding B, C, D, and E points. Point A will be left there, as long as the delegation comes down to inspect, survey and evaluate the reserves, they will still see that this place still has sand and allow the exploitation to be extended.
With his experience, U. said that just spending time counting barges can also know the scams of reserves of sand mines. “A crane can scrape 4,000-5,000 m³/day, but sometimes they only issue an invoice of 200 m, the rest is sold out, the sand buyer will have to go through the trigger to find a legal invoice. Thus, a sand scraper can earn 400-450 million VND/day, up to tens of billion VND per month. U. said, people know the tricks of the sand mines but few dare to speak out for fear of revenge. “You may not be afraid, but they hire gangsters to threaten your children, no matter how tough you are, you will have to get tired of it.”
Also in Dong Thap, an agricultural construction worker confessed to us that, even for state-owned river embankments, there is a contract to supply sand, but to get sand quickly, each barge has to pay. 5-7 million VND to “line your hands” for the scraper, otherwise you will have to wait in line for a very long time.
In Can Tho, Mr. PTD, the owner of a sand business, used to have a fleet of barges to transport, and he himself was “touched” by the tax authorities because he was “sticked” to dozens of false invoices to buy smuggled sand. Showing us the false invoices and summons from the authorities, Mr. D. blasphemously said: “Smuggled sand, illegal regular sand wants to buy sand with the right invoices and documents, in the right volume, never being allowed to buy sand. , can only do the trick. Fortunately, I bought it through an intermediary, but I bought the sand myself, buying the bill is a crime.”
Referring to the sand shortage crisis in the Mekong Delta, Mr. D. shook his head and said: “It’s just a crisis seen on paper. Because of the fact, the demand for sand for civil construction in the Mekong Delta and HCMC and the Southeast region every day is no less than 300,000 m³. Each month is about 9 million m³ of sand, a year is more than 100 million m³. Where does the sand meet?”. “Looking at the number of licensed mining reserves compared to demand, it can be understood that a very large amount of sand has been fraudulently exploited. It is also from here that the sand stork is born, the bill stork is very popular in many places”. Having said that, Mr. D. gave PV Thanh Nien a few phone numbers of the “sand stork”, the shipping barge for verification.