(PLO)- Individual apartments are “transformed” into apartment buildings with fire safety approvals like regular houses, leaving the safety of users hanging in the balance.
These days, I am on a business trip in Hanoi. When I received news of the ‘mini apartment’ fire, I had just returned to the hotel and rested a bit. That terrible fire was about 8 km from where I live. After hearing the news, I was haunted all day and will be by it for a long time.
When people read the news in the newspaper, even praying seemed too late.
Up to now, there are no separate fire prevention and fighting standards for houses that were originally licensed as individual apartments and then “transformed” into apartments. Checking and approving fire protection standards for it, if any, is just checking and approving fire safety for normal housing projects. Subsequent arising issues regarding use rights and functions were not promptly adjusted. And from there, the health and life safety of users hangs in the balance.
A piece of land of more than a hundred square meters, built with many floors, each floor has many apartments, then that building is truly a miniature apartment building. And containing within it an entire community of people with different living hours and occupations, it cannot be managed and licensed like individual housing. It cannot simply be considered just a big house with many rooms. Not managing the fire protection of that house as an apartment right from the time of licensing, but it cannot prevent it from existing with the whole community living there. Because after construction is completed, the homeowner can sell or rent it out.
Until something goes wrong, society at large will want to find an address to blame. But before we see the negligence of a particular officer or agency (there always is and will always be found), we need to be frank to see that the biggest responsibility is the macro management of construction. construction and urban. It has created a vast gap in standards.
Seven years ago today, in September 2016, I applied for a visa to the UK to study a short media management course organized by the Vietnam Journalists Association. The British Consulate made an appointment for me to have a visa three days before my flight. But on time, my application was rejected. The reason is that I declared my residence when I arrived in London as the private home of the partner with the course organizer. The British Consulate replied: We have verified that the house is only eligible for two people to stay, but he sponsored three people and you are the third person.
It took a few days to re-apply for a visa with the support of a travel company. I was granted a visa to the UK one day late for the course, after proving that my place of residence this time was a hotel in London.
At that time, I kept asking myself: When will we be able to grasp a house that is not qualified to welcome even one more guest?
With current regulations, management agencies can license people to build a large house with dozens of identical rooms. Once completed, the homeowner can rent or sell each room with a self-contained building (as long as it meets the minimum area and other regulations of the Construction Law and Housing Law). The license to build individual houses became the legal premise for the subsequent appearance of a true apartment building with dozens of households.
Therefore, individual houses, if built in the form of many small apartments, must be granted a construction permit with the same fire protection conditions as for apartments, and when there is a transfer of use rights, common ownership for many people or Many people move in and have to manage it like an apartment building.
Until that is done, there still exists a potentially dangerous gap in social governance and urban management.
NGUYEN DUC HIEN
