Second nose gear wheel of Vietjet’s aircraft found

The second nose gear wheel of a Vietjet A321neo aircraft that made a troubled landing on the night of November 29 was found onDecember 2, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV).

One of the two nose gear wheels of a Vietjet aircraft that made a troubled landing on November 29 at Buon Ma Thuot airport

On the same day, an expert team assigned by the Airbus aircraft maker arrived in Buon Ma Thuot in Daklak Province to work with CAAV’s investigators to launch an inspection into the landing incident of Flight VJ356, whose nose landing gear lost its two wheels during the landing.

Vietjet put the Airbus aircraft into commercial service on November 15.

Regarding the first nose gear wheel, local officials on November 30 found it fairly intact on the No.9 runway at Buon Ma Thuot airport.

Le Dinh Tho, Deputy Minister of Transport, confirmed yesterday that the CAAV investigation team had indefinitely confiscated the licenses of the two foreign pilots in charge of the flight to serve the investigation. The competent agencies have questioned the two pilots several times to clarify issues related to the incident.

Also, CAAV is currently collecting additional evidence to facilitate the investigation into the cause of the rough landing by analyzing the plane’s black boxes. In addition, the flight crew in charge of the flight was suspended from work two days ago.

After the incident, Buon Ma Thuot airport was shut down until Thursday afternoon to cope with the aftermath, with many flights to and from the airport being affected.

All 207 passengers on board were safe, and an emergency evacuation was promptly carried out after the incident, while six people were injured and immediately hospitalized but later discharged, Vietjet said in a statement.

Support for fish farmers on La Ngà River approved

Đồng Nai farmers whose fish stocks were wiped out in May will receive compensation. — Photo dantri.com.vn

The People’s Commitee of Đồng Nai Province had approved a budget to support people hit by a mass fish death on the La Ngà River in Định Quán District in May, the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development said.

In total, 129 farmer households will receive compensation of over VNĐ12.3 billion (US$534,000) to restore production after over 1,500 tonnes of fish raised in cages were reported dead on May 21, Dân Trí online newspaper reported.

After an investigation, authorities determined the fish died from a natural disaster.

Oysters die en mass

Aquaculture farmers in the central province of Nghệ An have seen large numbers of their oysters die in recent days, leaving them in financial difficulties, the Voice of Việt Nam reported.

The deaths wiped out 60-80 per cent of oysters raised across dozen of hectares of aqua farms in Hoàng Mai Township, according to local residents.

The death of the oysters occurred ten days ago, said Nguyễn Văn Được, a farmer in Quỳnh Thiện District.

About 2.5ha of oysters were set to be harvested next month, but 80 per cent of them had died from unknown causes, he said.

In Quỳnh Lập Commune, dozens of oyster farmers are in the same situation.

“I have farmed oysters for many years, but this is the first time that so many have died,” Phan Hồng Dũng, a local farmer, said.

According to a report from Hoàng Mai Township People’s Committee, fish raised in cages on the Hoàng Mai River had also died en masse.

Local authorities have taken samples of the dead oysters and water and asked farmers to remove all the dead oysters from breading areas as soon as possible in order to avoid contamination. 

Red Cross project encourages cornea donations

Visually impaired singer Hà Văn Đông performs at a launch ceremony for the project Khát Vọng Sáng which calls on people to donate their corneas after death. 

The Việt Nam Council of the Red Cross in collaboration with Y tế và Sức Khỏe (Health and Medical) channel ytvn.vn on Friday launched a project that calls on the public to donate their corneas after death.  

The project Khát Vọng Sáng will also provide medical guidance to people with eye diseases.

Under the sponsorship of the C.P. Việt Nam Charity Fund, it will help people with visual impairment, and will seek individual and organisational sponsors.

It is estimated that more than 200,000 people who have vision problems directly related to the cornea need surgery. Since 2007, more than 35,000 people have registered to donate their cornea after death.

Of these, 494 have been donated. However, more than 1,000 people are on the national waiting list.

About 300 people are added each year to the waiting list, according to the Central Eye Hospital.

Việt Nam has nearly three million people with visual impairments. One third of them are poor.

Nine drug traffickers sentenced to death

The People’s Court in the northern province of Hà Nam on Friday handed down nine death penalties, three life sentences and up to 21 years in prison to members of a drug trafficking ring.

The 22 Vietnamese men and women were found guilty of trafficking 18.5kg of heroin along with bags of synthetic drugs.

According to the verdict by the People’s Supreme Procuracy, from June 2016 to late March 2017, ringleaders including Lê Văn Mạnh and and Nguyễn Thị Thanh Huyền from Hà Nam Province’s Phủ Lý City had regularly travelled to the northern province of Sơn La to buy drugs. The drugs were then sold to dealers in Hà Nam and Nam Định.

Giàng A Trứ from Lóng Luông Commune in Vân Hồ District and Sùng A Khánh from Phò Cò Commune in Mai Châu District were identified as the suppliers.

Mạnh, Huyền, Khánh and Trứ were among the nine people to receive the death sentence on Thurday.

Under Vietnamese law, anyone found trafficking or possessing more than 600 grammes of heroin faces the death penalty. 

Việt kiều conference urges HCM City to modernise education

Việt kiều (overseas Vietnamese) have urged HCM City to carry out a radical overhaul of teaching methods to promote higher education.– Photo giaoduc.net.vn

Việt kiều (overseas Vietnamese) have urged HCM City to carry out a radical overhaul of teaching methods to promote higher education.

Speaking at a conference titled “Overseas Vietnamese’s suggestions for promoting higher education in HCM City” in the city on Thursday, they also discussed the standardisation of training activities based on international standards, proposed solutions for suitable employment of university graduates and the use of industry 4.0 technologies in higher education.

Prof Đặng Lương Mô from Japan said universities and junior colleges in the city should focus their investment on facilities and equipment.

The city needed quality teaching staff while students should be self-motivated and creative, he added said.

Võ Thanh Sơn from Belgium recommended that universities, colleges and students should deepen their professional knowledge to improve the city’s human resource availability.

Dr Nguyễn Thiện Tống said the quality of the city’s training programmes was lower than at Australian universities.

The technological training provided by HCM City universities and colleges was “outdated”, he said.

City authorities must renovate and offer training programmes that cover both science – technology and economics, he said.

According to figures released by the Statistics Bureau, 75 per cent of graduates from HCM City universities and colleges are either unemployed or in unskilled jobs. In Việt Nam, more than 400,000 university and colleges graduate every year become jobless, with 90 per cent not possessing soft skills.

Danny Võ Thành Đăng from Singapore encouraged youngsters, especially students at city universities, to equip themselves with necessary skills to get used to working conditions after graduation.

According to the city Department of Education and Training, a comprehensive overhaul of the education sector and improving the quality of human resources require universities and colleges to innovate in their teaching methods, modernise their curriculums and focus on personality, morality, ideals, and awareness of starting a career.

Authorities should make efforts to create a “society of learning”, encourage and create favourable conditions for people to devote their lives to academics, thus creating quality human resources to meet the demand for socio-economic development and international integration, said Lê Hoài Nam, deputy director of the HCM City Department of Education and Training..

The conference was organised by the Committee for Overseas Vietnamese. 

Hà Nội to maintain operation of four major bus stations

Mỹ Đình bus station will be kept open rather than switching into a car park.

The Hà Nội People’s Committee decided to maintain operation of four major bus stations in the inner city: Gia Lâm, Mỹ Đình, Giáp Bát and Nước Ngầm. The city’s Department of Transport had previously planned to switch the stations into car parks and inner-city bus interchanges by 2020.

The switch was part of the department’s draft plan to improve parking lots, bus stations and bus interchanges by 2030 with a view to 2050. Hà Nội has nine inter-province bus stations, covering a total of 17.9 hectares of land. These four are in populated areas, causing traffic pressure in the city centre.

However, according to a latest announcement from the People’s Committee, the stations would temporarily be kept and upgraded, said dantri.com.vn online newspaper reported

In addition, the city plans to build seven more coach stations. Between 2018 and 2025, the city will invest about VNĐ2,300 billion (US$98.6 million) in constructing five inter-provincial coach stations. These include a 10.4-ha Cổ Bi Station in Gia Lâm District, 5.3-ha Đông Anh Station in Đông Anh District, 10-ha Southern station and Nội Bài Bus Station in Sóc Sơn District and Sơn Tây 1. New bus stations in the Belt Road 4 area, are more convenient for passengers to travel inter-province routes and also help ease traffic congestion in the inner city.

In satellite urban areas including Phú Xuyên, Xuân Mai, Hòa Lạc, Sơn Tây and Sóc Sơn, the city plans to build 13 coach stations on 57 hectares of land with a total investment of VNĐ3,254 billion ($139.5 million).

According to the city authorities’ master plan, Hà Nội will have 1,334 public parking projects with a total investment of VNĐ232 trillion ($9.9 billion). 

HCM City faces shortage of blood stock for Tet

The blood bank of the Ho Chi Minh City Blood Transfusion and Haematology Hospital is running low on blood stock for the upcoming Lunar New Year (Tet) festival, said Director of the hospital Phu Chi Dung.

Doctor Dung said that the hospital’s blood bank supplies blood to over 100 hospitals in the city, with an average 800-1,000 patients needing blood transfusion each day. 

The demand for blood in the city has increased by 20-30 percent compared to last year as the number of patients flocking to the city from other localities is rising.

While Tet is only 8 weeks away, the bank still lacks about 13,000 blood packs (each pack containing 250-450ml) to ensure supply, or 1,500 new blood packs each week.  

However, Dr Dung is concerned that the bank will not receive enough blood as many districts and wards have stopped calling for blood donation after reaching the targets for this year, and will only resume the campaign in January 2019.

He said that he will propose the city to raise the blood donation targets of districts, and call for locals to donate their blood more times in a year.

Currently, the ratio of people donating their blood for two times or more a year in Vietnam is only over 1 percent of the total donors.

The Blood Transfusion and Haematology Hospital will also ask the municipal Department of Health to expand the blood bank capacity to 750,000-1 million blood units per year from the current 250,000 units.

Tien Giang adopts new farming models amid climate change

The Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang has developed new agricultural production models that provide farmers with a reliable income to cope with climate change in its eastern districts and Go Cong town.

They include growing rice in the rainy season and breeding shrimp in the dry season in the same field. Others include growing vegetables, dragon fruit and other crops instead of rice.

Located downstream of the Tien River, a major tributary of the Mekong, the province is severely affected by saltwater intrusion in the eastern districts of Cho Gao, Go Cong Tay, Tan Phu Dong, and Go Cong Dong and Go Cong town.

They have total land of more than 101,000ha, or 40.4 percent of the province’s total, including 73,000ha of farmlands.

The districts, which are on or close to the coast, are normally affected by drought and saltwater intrusion for three to six months every year during the dry season.

In the past local farmers grew only rice and had modest incomes because of low yields in the dry season. With the encouragement of local authorities, in recent years they have begun to rotate rice with other crops or switch completely to fruits and other crops.  

Pham Van Minh, who has a 3.5ha rice field in Tan Phu Dong district’s Phu Tan commune, said he has begun to alternate between rice in the rainy season and shrimp and crabs in the dry season.

He earns around 214 million VND (9,200 USD) a year now, twice the amount from just rice, he said.

Le Hong Dang of Tan Phu Dong’s Phu Dong commune has begun to grow red chilli and lemongrass instead of rice on his 1.1ha of land. Last year, he earned 60 million VND (2,570 USD) from them, he said.

Nguyen Van Hai, head of the Tan Phu Dong Agriculture and Rural Development Division, said farmers there successfully grow lemongrass in rice fields, establishing the province’s largest lemongrass growing area.

The district has more than 1,500ha under the crop and an annual output of 20,000 tonnes, he said.

More than 500ha of paddies in the district are also used to rotate between rice and shrimp, providing farmers with annual incomes of hundreds of million of VND per hectare, he said.

Tan Phu Dong has determined lemongrass is one of its key crops to adapt to climate change and provide steady incomes to farmers since it is easy to grow even in areas where saltwater intrudes.

Farmers said they could harvest 15 tonnes of lemongrass per hectare each year, earning 1-1.5 million VND per tonne.

In Go Cong Dong, many farmers are now using their paddies to grow vegetables and fruits to Vietnam good agricultural practices (VietGAP) standards.

In its Kieng Phuoc commune, 60 farmers grow red-flesh dragon fruit on 40ha and earn high incomes.

The commune has set up the Kieng Phuoc VietGAP Dragon Fruit Cooperative and plans to expand the area under dragon fruit to 250ha in areas contaminated by saltwater.

Cao Van Hoa, Deputy Director of the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said in the eastern districts’ rice farmers have begun to rotate rice and another crop on nearly 15,000ha and grow other crops only on nearly 2,000ha of paddies in the last two years.

The districts have taught farmers new techniques to improve quality, he said.

Under the province’s plan to restructure agricultural production in eastern districts by 2025, which began two years ago, the districts will only plant two rice crops a year or rotate between rice and one other crop.

Tan Phu Dong district will switch to other crops that can tolerate saltwater. The district will grow high-value vegetables and other crops and expand the models of rotating between rice and fish or shrimp.

Pham Anh Tuan, Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, said the plan would cost more than 1.66 trillion VND (71.1 million USD).

“Climate change is a challenge and an opportunity for difficult areas like Go Cong to restructure and develop sustainably,” he said.

More recycled playground opened for kids in Hanoi

An outdoor playground built with recycled materials was put into operation in Lien Ha commune, Dong Anh district, Hanoi on December  2.

The inauguration ceremony was organised by Think Playgrounds (TPG) social enterprise, the Live and Learn Vietnam centre, the women’s union of Dong Anh district and partners. 

The project was constructed under the support of the France - Germany Cultural Fund, the Goethe Institute in Hanoi, the French Cultural Centre (L'espace) in Hanoi, the Ford Vietnam and other sponsors. 

Director of the Goethe Institute in Hanoi Wilfied said this is the first playground designed by many famous experts of France, Germany and Vietnam who are working in designing play spaces for children. 

The playground is a combined project of the event “Play Campaign” and the idea of building a recycled playground together with the community in Dong Anh district, which aims to raise public awareness of free playing in public areas and the importance of using recycled materials to contribute to reducing urban waste.  

A festival to encourage playing with recycled toys was also organised the same day. 

Nguyen Tieu Quoc Dat, co-founder of the TPG, said this is the 106th community playground built by TPG, adding that it demonstrates that local communities and organisations play an important role in promoting construction of public spaces for all people.

Sunflower Festival 2018 supports child cancer patients

The Sunflower Festival 2018 in support of child cancer patients was launched in Ho Chi Minh City on December 2, as part of the “Thuy’s Dream” programme set up by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper. 

Speaking at the event, Nguyen Thi Huong, member of the newspaper’s editorial board and representative from the organising board, said the festival has received support from businesses and people nationwide. 

Before the festival, the organising board launched a blood donation event, visited and presented gifts to children living with cancer in hospitals while hundreds of volunteers collected products to raise funds at the event. 

Not only the support of nearly 10,000 people in Ho Chi Minh City, over 314,000 others also joined the programme via writing articles and sharing images of sunflower on the social media, thus contributing over 150 million VND (6,500 USD) to the fund for cancer patients and supporting 300 million VND via a walking event. 

Philanthropists nationwide presented more than 7 billion VND to the fund. The organising board granted 77 “Thuy’s Dream” scholarships, each worth 5 million VN, to child cancer patients with outstanding academic performances. 

Launched for the first time in 2008, the festival is an important event of the “Thuy’s Dream” programme which has so far received and offered over 34 billion VND to child cancer patients across the country.-

Ethnic Khmer handicraft villages expand in Trà Vinh

Hàm Tân sedge mat weaving village in Trà Vinh Province’s Trà Cú District has produced items for nearly 100 years. 

Three ethnic Khmer handicraft villages in Trà Vinh Province’s Trà Cú District have expanded over the last four years due to high demand and support from local authorities.

Two of the handicraft villages are in Đại An and Hàm Giang communes, as well as the sedge mat weaving village in Hàm Tân Commune.

The Đại An handicraft village uses bamboo to make tables, chairs, baskets, fish catching tools and other houseware items as well as souvenirs and decorative items for houses, entertainment places and resorts.

The Hàm Giang handicraft village also uses bamboo to produce high-class beds, tables, chairs and other houseware items, all in high demand by restaurants and tourism sites.

To improve transport to the three villages, the province spent more than VNĐ9.6 billion (US$410,000) to build nine concrete roads with a total length of 8.2km, according to the province’s Department of Industry and Trade.

Thạch Chi Na, who makes houseware items in Hàm Giang handcraft village, said with the province’s support, many households making handicraft products in the village have worked since 2015 to set up a handicraft co-operative team.

The village products sell locally and in provinces including Bến Tre, Sóc Trăng, Cà Mau and Bạc Liêu, he said.

Workers at the village have an average daily income of VNĐ200,000 – 250,000 ($8.6 – 10.7).

Last year, the Department of Industry and Trade gave VNĐ404 million ($17,300) to a household producer Trì Cảnh in Hàm Giang handicraft village to build a workshop, buy facilities and provide vocational training for its 20 workers. 

In the first quarter of the year, the department offered consultancy to Trì Cảnh to set up its showroom, design its logo and make new products.

In Đại An handicraft village, more than 60 locals are making handicraft products.

According to Đồ Văn Dưng, deputy chairman of the Đại An Commune People’s Committee, production cannot meet the high demand. Products such as baskets, flower vases and flower baskets are favoured by tourists, restaurants and hotels.

The village earned total revenue of VNĐ6 billion ($257,000) from selling handicraft products last year.

However, the two villages are facing a shortage of materials as locally grown bamboo only meets 30 per cent of their needs.  

Most bamboo materials have to be bought from other provinces, causing high production costs.

In Hàm Tân sedge mat weaving village, locals have produced various types of sedge mats for nearly 100 years.

The village is famous for its high-quality white-coloured sedge mats and colored, patterned sedge mats.

Hàm Tân has more than 2,250 households. Of these, 478 of them weave mats and 91 grow sedge for making mats.

The village produces more than 140,000 sedge mats a year.

Normally, two people working together can weave two sedge mats measuring 2 metres long by 1.6 metres a day and earn a profit of VNĐ60,000 -70,000 ($2.5 - 3).

Liêng Phước Thiện, chairman of the Hàm Tân Commune People’s Committee, said: “In Hàm Tân, most people know weaving sedge mats. Besides working on fields, people use their free time to weave sedge mats.”

The commune has also provided money for locals to buy sedge for weaving mats or to plant sedge to increase income.

The province’s researchers have also created mat weaving machines to weave mats more quickly compared to manual weaving.

It also has helped villagers buy mat weaving machines to improve productivity.

Trần Minh Cảnh in Hàm Tân was provided with 50 per cent of the cost of buying a mat weaving machine, worth VNĐ35 million ($1,500) in 2016.

The mat weaving machine helped his family weave 10 to 12 sedge mats a day.

Previously, his family could only make four sedge mats a day via manual weaving.

The commune now has five mat weaving machines.