Smart Cities Sustainability Digital Government

My Urban Challenge: City Director, Vientiane

By Apala Bhattacharya

Boosting hospitals and healthcare talent is a major focus.

The capital city of Laos is going through an infrastructure overhaul and looking to clean up to transform into a clean and green city. But for Director of the City Office for Management and Service, Vilayvone Chanthalaty, the challenges in achieving this outcome are plenty.

The infrastructure budget is one of them. Chanthalaty hopes that they can find unique solutions to the problem of infrastructure financing, working in tandem with the private and public sector.

“We try to motivate the citizens to contribute some money to the government, like citizens contribute 30%, the government support 70% for the small roads, for the main roads the government has to make the plan and set up the budget,” she notes.

Infrastructure budget isn’t the only factor in her list of challenges either. “We still lack technical expert material and education and knowledge from the people in our country,” she adds.

Below, we share some challenges that Vientiane is facing: