HCMC street names, numbers a basket case

No direction home

Nguyen Quang Liem, a resident at 16/9 Pham Van Chieu Street in Go Vap District’s Ward 9, said there was another house sharing his address on the same street.

Postal deliveries have been confused for years.

Liem also said that no one has been able to find his house since authorities re-drew the local wards in late 2006, transferring his neighborhood from Ward 12 to Ward 9.

Now, he is technically in Ward 9, but his address is still in Ward 12 on all official paperwork and the house numbers outside homes in his neighborhood still say Ward 12.

Making matters worse, most of the house numbers on Pham Van Chieu Street are labeled with a slash mark, which indicates houses that are in small alleys off the main road.

But even the homes directly on the street have slash marks.

Representative Luu Dai Hai from the Ward 9 People’s Committee said that local police had given temporary numbers to these houses years ago as a way to better manage the area.

But he admitted that many of these old numbers still existed and that many were grossly out of order.

Hai said ward officials would be willing to revise the residents’ address if necessary to make their administrative paperwork procedures less complicated.

In Phu Nhuan District, some houses are labeled in numerical order based on their location on the street, while other addresses also contain the “block number” that construction companies arbitrarily gave them without official approval.

Thus, the address of the Phu Nhuan Construction Techniques Joint Stock Company – 14/C 12A Phan Xich Long Street – is nearly impossible to find unless you know which is the house number, which is the block number.

One out of many

Last month, a mother from the central province of Quang Tri came to visit her daughter in HCMC.

The girl told her mother she was staying at the intersection of Tran Hung Dao and Tan Da streets.

The mother searched around the intersection in District 5 through the early hours of the morning until she found out the girl was staying at an intersection of the same name in District 9, 20 km away.

Many streets share the same name, including Ly Thuong Kiet streets in Go Vap and Tan Binh districts and Phan Van Tri streets in Go Vap District and District 5.

Adding to the confusion is an area in Tan Binh District where four streets named Hoang Viet intersect each other consecutively.

Statistics from HCMC Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism showed that 120 names were used twice to name different city streets.

Names are strange

In District 8, a new street was recently named 332 Chanh Hung Street because it crossed Chanh Hung Street next to the house number 332.

But Chanh Hung Street’s name has since been changed to Pham Hung, while 332 Chanh Hung Street still carries the strange name.

Even government offices are confusingly numbered.

The District 8 People’s Committee is located at “No. 4 on 1011 Pham The Hien Street” and the District Communist Party Unit’s office – which is next door – is labeled as “No. 2 on 1011 Street.”

Then there are 30 streets in the Phu My Hung new urban area carrying English names that many Vietnamese can’t read, such as S Ave North, West 8th St and H Ave.

Local authorities decided to name these streets after famous Vietnamese figures in 2002, but no work has since been done on this issue.

But Ta Duc Thanh, an official from the city’s Southern Area Management Board, said residents are often confused by street name changes.

Two years ago, the Street Name Committee asked the city’s Association of History and Science to provide a list of historic names – people and locations – that could be used to name and rename streets.

The association provided 223 but next to none of them have been used.

No method to madness

According to committee secretary Phan Trong Hien, local authorities aren’t sure of what criteria they should use to name streets.

“Street naming has several requirements. In order to be named, a street must be at least 200 meters in length and the distance between the center of the street and houses on either side must be at least 12 meters. We also have to consider the relationship between the name to be given and the specific area,” he said.

According to Hien, street names in HCMC and Hanoi must also be approved by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the cities’ People’s Councils.

According to a 1998 decision issued by the HCMC People’s Committee, addresses in districts 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, Phu Nhuan, Binh

Thanh, Tan Binh, Go Vap, Hoc Mon, Binh Chanh, Cu Chi, must ascend from east to west, south to north.

However, another regulation issued by the Ministry of Construction required house numbers to be marked from north to south, east to west, northeast to southwest, and southeast to northwest.

In the meantime, head of the Go Vap District Urban Management Board Do Anh Khang said his district would move forward by renumbering houses on Quang Trung Street in line with the Ministry of Construction rule as the HCMC committee has said it would revise its decision in line with the ministry’s.

Khang also said the district authorities would consider a plan to change the numbers of all houses in the district in 2009.

Nguyen Quang Liem, a resident at 16/9 Pham Van Chieu Street in Go Vap District’s Ward 9, said there was another house sharing his address on the same street.He’s technically in Ward 9 but his address is still in Ward 12.	Though shown here as located on Phan Huy Ich Street, this resident’s house actually shares the same address on paper with Liem’s residence.

Reported by Chi Quoc – Nguyen Trieu