A household in Tan Viet commune encroached on irrigation land.

Dozens of households in Ngoc Lo village (Tan Viet) were upset when meeting us. Ms. Pham Thi Choan said: "Many traders want to go to the fields to buy guava but cannot, it is very difficult to travel and produce." This is not only a canal that provides irrigation water for production but also drains domestic water for the people. If the canal does not drain, on rainy days, wastewater from some households will flow into the house through the sewers.

According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Ly, Head of the Women's Association of Ngoc Lo village, Mr. Trong and his wife previously coordinated with the commune government to build a wall to leave a path for the village. "The commune sent cadastral officers to set up markers to prepare for road construction, but Mr. Trong's daughter, Ms. Nguyen Thi Huong, came back to remove the markers. Since then, Mr. Trong and his wife firmly believed that this was their family's land and they had not encroached on it," Ms. Ly said.

According to many households, in the past, people used to go along the road on both sides of the canal to go to the fields to plant and take care of guava trees, but since Mr. Trong's family built a surrounding wall, they have had to go along the other side of the canal.

Working with us, Mr. Trong’s family affirmed that they did not encroach on anyone’s land, and that the wall was built entirely on agricultural land that he had previously purchased. The opinions of the surrounding people and neighbors are fabricated. “If anyone touches my family’s land, I will continue to file a complaint at the district, provincial, or even higher levels,” Mr. Trong said.

At the People's Committee of Tan Viet Commune, after looking up information from documents, minutes and other land records, we learned that Mr. Trong's family had an agricultural land plot in front of their house measuring 83 square meters, then bought more from some households in the village, and now this land plot is 202 square meters wide. However, when recently measured, this land plot is 280.3 square meters wide, an increase of 78.3 square meters. Due to difficulties in traveling and production, many households with cultivated land in this rice field have petitioned the People's Committee of Tan Viet Commune to reclaim the irrigation land so that people can renovate, clear ditches and build roads to the fields.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Duyen, Vice Chairwoman of Tan Viet Commune People's Committee, said that many times the leaders of the commune and village have come to the house to propagate and persuade Mr. Trong's family to move the wall back inside, return the ditches so that people can renovate them to make roads to the fields because this is also one of the criteria for building new rural areas, advanced new rural areas, and exemplary ones. The Commune People's Committee has come to work and agreed to take 55.2 m2 of the above-mentioned increased land area for people to build roads to the fields. Thus, Mr. Trong's family can still use 23.1 m2 of irrigation land until the commune needs to continue to reclaim it. However, Mr. Trong's family did not cooperate and did not agree with the above agreement. The Commune People's Committee invited staff and officers of the Thanh Ha District Land Use Rights Registration Office to measure and determine the boundary, and asked Mr. Trong's family to dismantle the surrounding wall themselves, but the family did not comply.