In ‘Billionaire Village’, the poor live large
Residents of a rural town in Vietnam are able to afford lavish homes that are paid for by family members working abroad.
DO THANH: Vietnam’s “Billionaire Village” doesn’t sound like a place people would want to leave, but at least three of the 39 victims found in the back of a lorry in Britain last week set off from there in search of their fortunes.
A billion dong may only be around US$43,000 (RM179,700), but in the rural, northern-central Vietnamese town of Do Thanh, the money goes a long way, and even farmers live in palatial mansions, paid for with money sent back by family members working abroad.
“70-80% of the villas here have been built with remittances,” said Nguyen Van Ha, chairman of the rural, rice-farming commune in Nghe An province.
“If you work in Vietnam earning dong, it would take a long time to build a big house like this,” Ha said, gesturing to the large, multi-storey villas flanking the town hall.
In Do Thanh, even the majestic, renaissance-style church towering over the plush, neighbouring villas was built with remittance money donated by the Catholic community.
Many other victims are believed to come from outside the town, in the surrounding district of Yen Thanh. In the 1980s, Do Thanh used to be one of the district’s poorest villages, according to state media.
One resident, 19-year-old Bui Thi Nhung, is thought by her family to be among the dead. She left a trail of messages on her social media account documenting her journey through Europe in the days before she boarded the fated vehicle.
Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Cuong said on Tuesday the nationality of the victims had not been officially confirmed but that
Vietnam and Britain were “trying to speed up identification of the bodies”.
The grisly discovery last week on an industrial estate near London, a magnet for Vietnamese migrants, has shone a spotlight on people smugglers bringing the poor of Asia, Africa and the Middle East on perilous journeys to the West.
In Vietnam, poor job prospects, encouragement by authorities, smuggling gangs, environmental disasters and government pressure on Catholics are all factors pushing people to leave.
But even though the cost of getting to Europe can run into thousands of dollars for migrants ready to pay for a so-called “VIP” service, they believe they can make enough money to justify the risk.
Overseas workers sent nearly US$16bil (RM66.8bil) in remittances to Vietnam in 2018, more than double the South-East Asian country’s trade surplus for the same period, according to World Bank data that showed remittances had risen 130% over the last decade. In Nghe An and neighbouring Ha Tinh province, official policy supports the legal export of labour.
Nghe An province alone rakes in some US$255mil (RM1.06bil) annually from its overseas citizens, according to state media.
“The remittance figures might be higher than reported as money transferred through unofficial ways, such as cash or as physical consumer goods, is not counted,” said Nguyen Tri Hieu, a Hanoibased economist and former government adviser.