VietNamNet Bridge – Hyundai Rotem Company has repeated its demand to continue construction of Thu Duc BOO Water Plant in HCMC’s Thu Duc District despite the seemingly-unreconcilable conflict with Thu Duc Water BOO Corporation (TDW) as the project owner.

In a letter signed on Wednesday by Kwon Tae Yeon, project manager of the water plant, the Korean company as the engineering-procurement-construction (EPC) contractor insisted that the project owner not create any damages for the contractor and normalize relations between the two sides for the final completion of the project.

The contractor made it clear that it wanted to finish the remaining 9% of the project, having completed 91% of all constructions before the project owner unilaterally terminated the contract last September.

The letter was forwarded to Le Vu Hoang as general director of TDW and its copies were also sent to the Government, the city’s authorities and other related agencies. In this letter, Hyundai Rotem once again requested the project owner immediately return all its assets that the investor “took away” last Saturday.

“We strongly oppose TDW in breaking into the our storehouse and overpowering our security guards to take away the important materials for the construction of the plant,” Kwon stated in the letter.

Kwon also accused that the action of TDW constituted a violation of “publicly appropriating the other’s assets” that is stipulated in the penal code, and added that the action only aggravated the already-tense conflict between the two sides since the contract termination.

As covered by the Daily on Thursday, Truong Khac Hoanh, deputy director of TDW, said that his company decided to terminate the contract because Hyundai Rotem failed to renew its credit guarantees as initially committed, left many works unfinished and slowed down the progress of the whole project.

The accusations were rejected by Cho Mun Ho, a law manager of Hyundai Rotem, who said a sum of US$5.7 million had been transferred to the project owner’s account as credit guarantees before the contract was terminated. Copies of invoices obtained by the Daily also proved this point.

“It’s difficult to understand why TDW unilaterally terminated the contract with us, then signed new contracts with the others. We don’t understand what was happening,” Cho told the Daily.

Regarding the foot-dragging progress, Cho blamed the project owner for failing to proceed with site clearance and handover of cleared space as committed. He said Hyundai Rotem had previously requested the investor to hasten site clearance to hand over the land for the contractor as soon as possible, but several requests from Hyundai Rotem were ignored.

The contract termination was also approved by the city’s Department of Transport and the city government.

A source told the Daily that vice chairman of the city Nguyen Thanh Tai on Thursday afternoon had a meeting with leaders of the city’s related departments to discuss legal aspects of the conflict before making a report to the Prime Minister in the coming days.

VietNamNet/SGT