Old teacher holds free class for border children in An Giang

A retired teacher has been offering free classes to poor children of mountainous An Giang Province for 18 years.

Nong Na Nuong, 66, lives in a charity house in Vinh Tam Hamlet of Vinh Trung Commune in Tinh Bien District, and gets no pension because she had to quit teaching because of health problems in 1997. She gets support from a relative and her neighbours.

But none of that has diminished her passion to teach.

“I had worked as a primary teacher for 20 years before opening this free class for local poor children," she said.

She teaches Vietnamese language and mathematics, at primary school level, and she attracts 10-15 students -- as many as 20 during summer.

“We really admire teacher Nuong for her enthusiasm for education," siad Le Thi Diem, the  mother of one of the students. "She refuses any tuition fees even though she has her own economic and health problems."

Many of her students are ethnic Kkmer, and sometimes Nuong's former pupils bring notebooks for the new students to use.

She was awarded the Medal “For the sake of women liberation” in 1995 and the Medal “For the sake of education” in 1996.

VCCI to launch annual report on labor market project

The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) organised a conference to announce the launch of annual report on labor market project in Hanoi on March 4.

The report, released annually in December, aims to honour outstanding businesses in developing labor resource as well as improving.

Accordingly, the report will analyse and evaluate key workforce issues such as recruitment, quality of labourers, and implementation of Law on Labour.

VCCI’s Chairman Vu Tien Loc said the launch of the project will assist the State in introducing strategic plans to develop the productivity of the national workforce.

Gyorgy Sziraczki, Director of the International Labour Organisation in Vietnam said the Vietnamese government should encourage the private sector to improve labour productivity and skills to create added value in the global chain and attract more foreign investors.

US$6.7 million for upgrading Hanoi’s dyke system

The Hanoi People's Committee will spend more than VND141 billion (US$6.7 million) from its spare budget to upgrade dykes and irrigation systems in the city, said the municipal Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The fund will be used to upgrade the dyke and irrigation system in the Thanh Oai, My Duc, Ung Hoa and Quoc Oai districts.

The Hanoi People's Committee has asked investors to use the fund properly in accordance with the State Budget Law.

The upgrade must ensure a good rate of progress and technological conditions. The investors must also report the work's progress to the People's Committee periodically.

Biker arrested for fatally running over escort rider

Dong Nai police on March 4 arrested a motorcyclist for running over an outrider who was escorting a cycling race on March 1, causing fatal multiple injuries.

Ngo Tieu Phung, 22, from the Mekong Delta province of An Giang is being investigated for traffic violations that have caused serious consequences, according to Nguyen Van Tho, spokesperson of Dong Nai Province Police Department.

Preliminary investigation found Phung was violating a speed limit when he ran over 53-year-old Lin Ma Sang, who was guarding the Binh Duong International Women’s Cycling Tournament on National Highway 20.

The accident happened at around 8:20 a.m., after Sang had collided with his teammate Tran Ngoc Thach and fell down.

As he was lying on the ground, Phung ran over him from behind.

Doctor Nguyen Song Cuu Long of Dinh Quan General Hospital said Sang succumbed to multiple injuries, with heart damage and four broken ribs.

Thach had a broken bone in his left feet while Phung and his co-rider on the same bike suffered minor injuries.

Three of them were discharged on the same day, the doctor said.

An unnamed leader of Dong Nai police was quoted by VnExpress as saying that only the escort riders are allowed to exceed speed limits and travel on the wrong lane under the direction of traffic police.

Any other motorcycle has to follow required speed limits, of 60 kilometers per hour (37 miles per hour) at that section, he said.

Phung was among a group of tourists from An Giang Province who were on a road trip to the Central Highlands on high-capacity motorbikes.

Phung was riding a Honda CB1000 which weighs more than 200 kilograms (441 lbs).

All private motorbikes in Vietnam used to be strictly standard bikes under 175cc, except for those owned by members of government-run motorbike clubs.

The regulation was changed last year, prompting a boom in the local high-capacity bike market.

Chinese arrested for smuggling 20 kilos of meth into Vietnam

Police in Quang Ninh Province near the border with China on Tuesday arrested a Chinese national for smuggling 20 kilograms of methamphetamine into Vietnam.

Chen Huo Quan, 48, was traveling on a taxi.He hid the illegal drugs under his seat at the back.

Chen, a Guangxi native, said he met a Chinese man named A Si at a bar in China in late February.

That man hired him to deliver the drugs to a customer in Vietnam.He said he was paid 10,000 yuan (US$1,600) for the delivery.

Police are investigating further.

Vietnam has some of the world’s toughest drug laws.

Those convicted of trafficking more than 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kilos of methamphetamine face death penalties.Producing or selling 100 g of heroin or 300 g of other drugs are also capital crimes.

US-funded anti-disaster center opened in central Vietnam

The People’s Committee of the central Vietnamese province of Quang Nam and the US Pacific Command inaugurated and put into operation a US-funded center for disaster prevention and control on March 3.    

Located in the provincial capital of Tam Ky, the center has two stories with a gross floor area of nearly 450m².

It is equipped with a solar energy system and a 30kVA power generator.

Work on the center started in July 2014 in the form of a turnkey project, with funding from the US Pacific Command and the US Defense Cooperation Office.

The center will facilitate Quang Nam in its activities to cope with disasters in the context that climate and weather conditions have been more and more extreme, Brigadier General John. E. O’Neil, the Director for Logistics, Engineering and Security Cooperation under the U.S. Pacific Command, said at the inauguration ceremony.

This center is the first of two anti-disaster centers to be built by the US Pacific Command in Vietnam, the official said.

In the coming time, the US Pacific command will continue funding the construction of a junior high school and a health station in Phu Ninh District of the same province, he added.

Southern search and rescue forces sign coordinating regulation

The border guard force in ten southern coastal provinces and the Marine Search and Rescue Centre Region III signed a coordinating regulation on search and rescue activities at a conference in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province on March 4.

The regulation spells out the tasks of each units while emphasizing the common responsibility to inform, update and exchange information with each other about the accidents and breakdowns happening in their managed water. In addition, they are asked to join hands to verify the unclear information.

At the event, the participants agreed to collaborate to provide professional training as well as organise joint exercises for efficient coordination in search and rescue missions.

Last year, search and rescue forces in the region carried out 57 missions involving 56 vessels and 344 victims, successfully saving 299 crew members and fishermen and salvaging six vessels.

A meeting will be organised on March 9 in Buon Ma Thuot city, Dak Lak province to honour 101 individuals from 19 ethnic minority groups in the Central Highlands, including 43 religious dignitaries, who have made outstanding contributions to the national building and defence.

The event, organised by the Steering Committee for the Central Highlands region, is part of activities to mark the 40th anniversary of the Victory of Buon Ma Thuot, which forms part of the National Reunification event 40 years ago.

The information was revealed at a working session between the Steering Committee’s standing members and local and central press agencies in Buon Ma Thuot on March 4.

Deputy Head of the Committee Tran Viet Hung asked the press to popularise widely practical programmes and movements that aim to draw greater participation from the ethnic minority people and religious dignitaries in socio-economic development.

The Central Highlands counts over 2 million religious followers, accounting for 36 percent of the total population, with nearly 500,000 from ethnic minority groups.

Vietnam is home to many religions and beliefs, mainly Buddhism, with 6.8 million followers, Catholicism (5.7 million), Hoa Hao (1.4 million), Cao Dai (808,000), Protestantism (734,000), Islam (73,000), and Brahmanism (56,000).-

Vietnam protects guest workers in Thailand

It is estimated that thousands of Vietnamese migrant workers fuel Thailand’s huge fishing and manufacturing industries as well as toil in restaurants and work as domestic helpers.

Many of these workers do not hold legal documents authorising them to work in the country and as a consequence are vulnerable to exploitation and lack access to legal protection for fear that they would be deported.

As a result, the Vietnam Overseas Labour Management Department working closely with the Thailand government has been taking the initiative to protect their rights.

The majority of these workers are from farming villages in rural Vietnam and they send their salaries to their families back home.

As one example of the abuse, take the case of dockworkers at the Pae Pla Pier in Mahachai, Thailand. Guest workers earn between US$9–US$18 per day for carting barrels of fish from the fishing trawlers and loading on to seafood trucks.

Another example is the fish canning factories of Unicord, where an estimated 6,000 guest workers, some of whom are Vietnamese, labour each day over two shifts for pithy wages.

Tran Van Duc, 46, from Cam Xuyen district in Ha Tinh province was raised in a low-income family and entered Thailand in 2000 to earn better wages to help support his family.

Duc said that more than 200 people from his home district are currently working in Bangkok, mainly as restaurant workers or household employees and substantially all of them are underpaid.

A local official from the village of My Loc, Hoang Thi Giang, said the village has more than 1,200 migrant workers in Thailand. In addition, many local people of other villages like Ky Phong and Nghi Thiet have gone to Thailand to work.

However, most of them are working illegally in Thailand, gaining entry to the country as a tourist and remaining to work without permits or agreements with employers, the official said adding that their working conditions and benefits are substandard.

Giang said she hoped that someday they would be able to work legally in Thailand and get the opportunity to earn a higher income on an equivalent basis with the country’s residents.

At talks between Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and his Thai counterpart Prayuth Chan-ocha in Hanoi late last year, the two sides reached a tentative agreement as to improve the legal status of guest workers.

A representative of the Vietnam Embassy in Thailand has now revealed that the final agreement to issue work permits has been reached.

The Cabinet of Thailand recently approved a resolution providing for the issuance of work permits to domestic workers and other unskilled persons working in such industries as manufacturing, fisheries, and restaurants.

The two sides are also finalising a comprehensive agreement, providing full legal protection for Vietnamese guest workers in Thailand with regard to equal wages for equal work, the right to public health services along with the right to occupational safety and social security.

Luxury cruise liner arrives at Nha Trang port

The five-star UK cruise liner Sapphire Princess docked on March 4 at the Nha Trang port in Khanh Hoa Province carrying over 2,600 foreign tourists and nearly 1,080 crew members.

After docking, the holidaymakers disembarked and joined local tours to discover the beautiful sandy beaches and take in some sightseeing at the more than 14 top attractions in the region including Po Nagar Cham Towers, Nha Trang Beach and Long Son Pagoda.

The timetable is for the ship to board the evening of March 4 and continue on to Vung Tau.

According to local provincial officials, so far this year,Nha Trang has welcomed six cruise ships bringing in excess of 10,000 inbound tourists.

Funding focus on district healthcare

The HCM City Department of Health will this year spend on improving facilities and training of health workers in district hospitals, especially clinics in wards and communes, to ease the load on city- and central-level hospitals.

At a ceremony held to honour outstanding health workers on Thursday (February 12), Nguyen Tan Binh, the department's head, said many existing programmes like opening satellite clinics, family doctors, and dispatching doctors from city-level hospitals to districts for training and working would continue this year.

These programmes have helped district hospitals earn the trust of people, he said quoting a department report, with the number of outpatients increasing by 36 per cent last year compared to 6 per cent in 2013.

The Binh Tan District Hospital saw the highest increase. They also saw the number of inpatients increase by 201 per cent compared to just 5 per cent in 2013.

The number of patients transferred to city- and central-level hospitals by the district hospitals reduced. It fell by 57.3 per cent for the District 2 Hospital, 80.8 per cent for the Tan Phu District Hospital and 43.6 per cent for the Binh Chanh District Hospital.

More hospitals were built in the city like the HCM City Paediatrics Hospital, increasing the number of beds per 10,000 population to 42.

The department tied up with Pham Ngoc Thach Medical University to train health personnel for the medical sector.

By last year the city's ratio of doctors per 10,000 population had increased to 14.5 from 13 in 2011.

The department has set up a council to oversee examination and treatment quality and supervise hospitals to provide safer and better quality healthcare to patients.

At the function, 26 outstanding hospitals and clinics and 87 doctors and nurses were honoured.

HCM City scrambles to meet vaccine goal

The Tan Phu District Preventive Health Centre has given free measles-rubella shots to children at the local Rang Dong Kindergarten.

The kindergarten early this week had written to students' parents to bring their kids for the vaccination to immunise them .

From 7am on Tuesday people started to bring their kids to the school. Nguyen Thi Thu Hong of the district's Phu Tho Hoa Ward said her five-year-old daughter had got two measles shots at nine and 15 months but no rubella shot because it was not in the earlier National Expanded Programme for Immunisation.

"Today the kindergarten announced that officials from the district Preventive Health Centre would come to provide the vaccine for free against measles and rubella.

"It is good!"

"The vaccine will help improve their immunity against measles and rubella."

District health officials are also scrambling to immunise children at other local kindergartens before a national campaign for providing the vaccine reaches its deadline this month.

Children not attending kindergartens have been urged to go to ward-level health centres for the vaccine, according to Dr Nguyen Tri Dung, head of the city Preventive Health Centre.

Other districts in the city have also been working with kindergartens for the vaccination since February when the campaign's programme for kids aged one to six began.

The campaign, which began last October, has three programmes in all, targeting children aged one to 14 around the country.

As of last month, around 18.3 million children nation-wide had been vaccinated, including 530,000 aged six to 14 in HCM City alone.

Last year the city reported 3,005 children with measles while only 402 have got the disease in 2013, according to the Preventive Health Centre.

Only one rubella case was reported last year.

Rural area project proves a success

Twenty-seven communes in outlying districts of HCM City have been officially recognised as "new rural area communes" with income per capita tripling to VND3.3 million (US$154.5) per month last year, up from VND1.3 ($60.8) million in 2008.

After six years of implementation of the National Target Programme on New Rural Area Development, the 27 communes of the 54 taking part in the programme meet all 19 criteria for new rural development.

As part of the effort, the city has improved and built more than 1,100 roads and bridges with a total of more than 754 kilometres during the last six years.

It has also dredged and improved more than 320 irrigation works, and built or upgraded 42 traditional markets, 24 healthcare centres and 133 schools.

At least 445 sport and cultural facilities, including 29 cultural and sport centres in communes, have also been built.

Speaking at a conference reviewing the implementation of the National Target Programme early this week, Le Thanh Hai, secretary of the HCM City People's Committee, said the city had created conditions for all 56 communes in five outlying districts to meet the 19 criteria needed for new rural development by Liberation Day (April 30).

Hai asked government agencies to focus primarily on manufacturing development and technical infrastructure projects.

He said that production value of farmers had doubled from VND158 million ($7,400) per hectare in 2010 to VND325 million ($15,223) per hectare because of the use of advanced technologies.

As a result, income per capita in the new rural areas rose from VND1.3 million a month in 2008 to VND3.3 million a month in 2014.

Tran Thanh Nam, deputy minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said HCM City would soon become the first locality in the country to have all its rural areas officially recognised as new rural development areas.

The city has achieved success in three main areas of the programme: planning, production and environmental protection.

Nam said the main focus of New Rural Area Development programme in the coming time is to improve the environment in rural areas, as only 20 per cent of the communes across the nation meet the requirements.

The Government is drafting more criteria for new rural area development as the country now has more than 800 communes across the country recognised as new rural areas, according to Nam.

Launched in 2010, the New Rural Development programme developed 19 criteria for new rural areas, covering infrastructure, production, living standards, income and culture, among others.

Hai Duong authorities detain overloaded trucks

The Hai Duong Province's traffic inspection team seized several overloaded trucks travelling through the province, the transport ministry's directorate for roads of Viet Nam announced today.

The trucks were reportedly carrying 200 per cent excess cargo on average.

On being informed about the overloaded trucks travelling on provincial way number 399, running through Kinh Mon District, on Tuesday, a local loading capacity examination station and the provincial traffic inspection team mobilised forces to chase and finally stop seven trucks, and required them to drive to a weighing station on Highway No 5 to check their cargo.

The inspection team found that all seven vehicles were carrying 155 to 239 per cent excess cargo.

Among the detained vehicles was a truck with the licence plate 98C-059.34 that was pulling a long trailer with the plate number 98R-002.12, carrying a load of 54 tonnes, equal to 239 per cent excess load. Nguyen Van Truong was driving the vehicle belonging to the one-member Hieu Chung Ltd Company. Another truck with the licence plate 98C-062.21 was pulling a trailer with 51.74 tonnes of cargo, equal to 215.5 per cent excess load. It is owned by the driver Ly Hong Nam.

The concerned authorities immediately took action and fined the vehicles more than VND188.5 million (US$8,700). They also revoked the licences of all the drivers for three months, and got all excess cargo offloaded before allowing the vehicles to continue their journey.

VEF/VNA/VNS/VOV/SGT/SGGP/Dantri/VIR