After more than 6 years of construction in a long expectation by the people and government on both sides of the TienRiver, the RachMieuBridge was eventually inaugurated and put into use at 10:30 AM January 19, 2009. The inaugural ceremony honorably received Mr Truong Tan Sang, member of the Politburo and Permanent member of the Party Secretariat; Mr Truong Vinh Trong, member of the Politburo and Deputy Prime Minister; General Le Hong Anh, member of the Politburo and Minister of Public Security; many other officials from the Central Government departments and ministry-level agencies. Provincial leaders and officials included Mr Huynh Van Be, Secretary of Ben Tre's Party Committee; Ms Nguyen Thi Kim Cuc, Secretary of Tien Giang's Party Committee; Mr Nguyen Thai Xay, Chairman of Ben Tre's People's Committee; Mr Nguyen Huu Chi, Chairman of Tien Giang's People's Committee; and many other officials and thousands of local people from Ben Tre and Tien Giang provinces.
In the high mood of the inauguration, Mr Ho Nghia Dung, Minister of Transport, highlighted: "The perfectly finished RachMieuBridge project is a show-case of our thirst to better ourselves to take command of modern technologies, and of the Vietnamese road and bridge building sector's spirit of self-make, self-sufficience and domestic forces upholding. It is the first time in history that a large-scaled cable-stayed reinforced concrete bridge, which used to be thought of as an impossible task for Vietnamese road and bridge engineers and technicians, is creatively designed and constructed totally by Vietnamese engineers. Lots of sicentific and technological advances have been effectively made full use of in the construction process. It is an excellent show-case of the will and determination of the transport sector inline with the country's industrialisation and modernisation. It also fairly realises the expectation from Ben Tre's and Tien Giang's people as well as the whole Mekong Delta Region".
In his speech at the inaugural ceremony, Mr Huynh Van Be emotionally expressed: "The RachMieuBridge is a project of skill and spirit, of brainpower and position of the Vietnamese bridge builders. Ben Tre as the coconut homeland and the three strips of water-surrounded land now continues to be praised as the homeland of modern bridges that are made by the hands and brainpower of the Vietnamese engineers and technicians. The Ben Tre people who live and work far away from home now have a new bridge, the RachMieuBridge, to love and to miss whenever they long for home. The two cable towers are reaching high into the sky like the symbols of hope and ambition. The RachMieuBridge may set the base for Ben Tre people to fly into the future with a new and higher level and better confidence".
Translated by An Chau