The Ho Chi Minh City authorities have called for a crackdown on businesses that exceed noise levels and disturb residents.
 

Traffic snarls National Highway 13 in HCM City. Municipal authorities have called for a crackdown on urban noise levels that disturb residents.

Businesses that cause excessive noise include coffee shops, bars, discotheques, clothes shops, factories and construction works.

District 5\'s Nguyen Trai Street, known for its fashion shops, is made excessively noisy at night by shops\' use of loudspeakers to attract customers.

The noise from businesses competing for customers by turning up the volume has been disturbing residents.

Dang Thanh, in District 5\'s Ward 4, said the music from many fashion shops caused residents to suffer and forced some to move.

Many karaoke shops, cafes, cell-phone and electronic dealers also exceeded noise levels in the city.

Plenty of bar clubs and the Bac Hai cafe village in District 10\'s Ward 15 always exceed noise levels during business hours, especially at night.

Among them are clubs or coffee shops like Now Club, Star Club, Hai Trieu, Nhat Nguyet, Hinh Nhu La, Dai Duong Xanh, which have loudspeakers at maximum level.

Many residents in Binh Tan, Tan Phu, Binh Chanh Districts and District 12 suffer from excessive noise from factories such as milling-machine factories in Binh Tan District\'s Binh Hung Hoa A Ward and the packaging service village on Ngoc Thoai Hau Street in Tan Phu District\'s Phu Thanh Ward.

In addition, city residents also suffer from traffic noise due to a sharp increase in vehicles plus truck and motorcycle horns.

Many drivers blast their horns near schools, hospitals and retirement homes where horn-use is legally restricted.s

Ward authorities said it is difficult to solve the problem of excessive noise at ward level because they don\'t have enough staff or equipment such as sound measuring machines.

Bui Thanh Sang, deputy manager of District 10\'s Department of Culture and Information, said the district closely monitored businesses that violated noise regulations such as karaoke shops, coffee villages and clubs but the offenders often didn\'t heed warnings.

In recent years, District 10 has had the most noise problems reported. Last year, there were hundreds of cases and violations with total fines amounting to hundreds of billions of dong.

However, nightclubs and discotheques make enough profit to afford to pay the fines then they carry on disturbing their neighbours, local authorities said.

According to Ho Chi Minh City\'s Environment Protection Department, the legal noise restriction is 75 decibels. But the noise at some places, particularly at District 7\'s Huynh Tan Phat – Nguyen Van Linh intersection and Binh Thanh District\'s Hang Xanh intersection, reached up to 85dB.