Angry residents taking aim at Daewon-Hoan Cau

Angry residents are adamant the buck stops with developers

According to the Ho Chi Minh City’s Department of Construction, Daewon Hoan Cau should fix the damage caused to the homes or pay compensation to the affected homeowners.
Thirteen out of 20 damaged houses have got the compensation to fix the houses themselves while the other four do not need to be fixed and some have not reached the agreement with Daewon Hoan Cau on the appropriate way to solve the problem between the investor and three house owners, according to one of house owners.

Luu Duc Thang, one of the house owners, said: “Daewon has agreed to fix our houses in six month time and some of my neighbours left the houses with a six month allowance of rental and moving fees, but finally, they did not keep their words.”
“They do not have the commitment to fix these. Instead of hiring the qualified quality control company and fixing our house, they excused me for delaying their business and asked me to compensate them for the delay,” said Thang.

According to Daewon Hoan Cau, it had to delay construction for three months and sustained heavy losses. The company had brought Thang to court and asked for compensation.
The first conciliation had been conducted with no further result, Thang said.
“The court has asked Daewon to rethink about the ways to solve my case and it has not responded, so, I’ll stay in my place,” said Thang.

Hwang Yu Nam, a Daewon Hoan Cau’s representative, said: “We will repair the houses, pay the compensation if any and pay the relocation fees. We never said we do not want to negotiate or have ignored their demands. So far almost 50 per cent of the damaged houses have already received full compensation.”

Hwang added: “During the construction, we pay them for relocation (to rent the house outside) except one house.
After we complete the initial stage of foundation, they asked us to hire SCQC Company to evaluate their damage and agreed to take an estimation from SCQC, but after we got the result from SCQC, they start asking higher compensation and repairing cost and their condition is keep changing.”

Thang asked the joint venture to repair his house within two years or otherwise the company should buy his house for $1 million. However, Hwang showed his frustration at Thang’s request, claiming there were no reasons for the company to pay $1 million to “fix” a 80 square metre house.

Hwang said: “We offer them safety is first so relocate first and continue negotiating but they refuse and threatening our company they would not move out unless we accepted their demand fully. Their delaying made damaged house condition worse because we could not start repairing the houses sooner so our company has to bear more cost.”

He said the construction site is situated next lakeside and soil condition is not good with mud soil.
“Additionally, most surrounding houses are not built strongly so when we started foundation work, some houses were affected and damaged,” said Hwang.

Thang said he would stay since there was no guarantee for a repaired house even he gave Daewon a two year time frame.
Thang said: “Daewon Hoan Cau was irresponsible and try to ignore our demand from time to time even they were wrong.”