Talks to focus on tackling ODA fraud

The first meeting of the Viet Nam-Japan Joint Committee, which will discuss measures to prevent fraud during the implementation of ODA projects alongside reforms for relevant policies, will be held on April 4 in Ha Noi.

The committee will be chaired by a deputy minister of transport and the Charge d'Affaires ad Interim at the Japanese Embassy in Ha Noi.

A working group from the Ministry led by Deputy Minister Nguyen Ngoc Dong visited Tokyo from March 25-28 to work with Japanese authorities investigating alleged bribery in a major Ha Noi railway project, according to a press release by the Ministry of Transport.

The team worked with Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as officials from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to look into the allegations, first published by media in Japan.

Dong briefed the Japanese officials on the response of the Vietnamese side after receiving the information and asked Japanese authorities to investigate the charges and share news related to their conclusions.

Highlighting the Vietnamese side's prompt, positive and drastic response, the Japanese side said the case had been transferred to the judicial forces of Japan and requested close co-operation from Vietnamese ministries and sectors when it came to releasing information to the media.

They also asked the Vietnamese side to help put forth measures to prevent corruption, bribery and unfair competition during the implementation of ODA-funded projects.

Dong proposed that JICA consider ways to renovate its lending mechanism to strengthen competition. He said his ministry had advised the Government to assign public security forces to work with Japan during the investigation.

Project helps better labour relations

The Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs, in conjunction with the International Labour Organisation, held a seminar to implement a project on developing labour relations in several cities and provinces in Vietnam.

The project aims to build a relations system that conforms with the 2012 Labour Code and the 2012 Trade Union Law, as well as improve the relationship between employers and workers.

It will be implemented in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, northern Hai Phong city and the southern provinces of Dong Nai and Binh Duong in the 2014-2017 period.

In the 2017-2020 period, successful activities will be expanded nationwide.

During the seminar, participants raised several challenges that need to be solved, including the improvement of labourers’ living conditions, measures to deal with strikes and the role of trade unions in the connection with employers.-

South Africa, Vietnam boost biodiversity protection

Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Bui Cach Tuyen has affirmed Vietnam’s wish to step up all-round cooperation with South Africa, especially in biodiversity protection.

Working with Deputy Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Rejoice Mabidfhasi as part of his trip to South Africa from March 21-29, Tuyen said the Vietnamese Government wants to bolster international cooperation in this field and the country has approved a national strategy and enforced a legal framework for biodiversity conservation.

Vietnam has adopted a number of international agreements such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), and the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (RAMSAR), Tuyen noted.

Deputy Minister Mabudafhasi praised the Vietnamese delegation’s visit as a combined effort by the two governments and people to deepen their partnership and realise the 2012 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in Hanoi, and an action plan inked in 2013 in Pretoria regarding biodiversity preservation.

During its stay, the delegation also toured a number of South African agencies and natural reserves.

HCM City needs over 460m USD for rural development

Ho Chi Minh City needs over 9.7 trillion VND (460 million USD) this year to invest in 50 suburban communes aiming to become new-style rural areas.

Over 51 percent of the sum will be sourced from the city budget with a view to helping 17 communes meet the 19 national criteria for effective rural communities. The remaining are expected to meet 15 criteria, heard a recent conference in Ho Chi Minh City to review its 2013 rural development.

Four years since the target programme on new rural development was launched, the city has seen 56 communes from the districts of Cu Chi, Can Gio, Hoc Mon, Binh Chanh and Nha Be join the effort, with six of them now meeting all the criteria.

As of January 2014, its total investment for the cause hit about 12.3 trillion VND (585 million USD) which was spent on 1,500 new buildings, the upgrade of over 730 dilapidated houses and an increase in production and trading.

The rate of poor households with an annual per-capita income of 12 million VND (570 USD) was brought down from 5.77 percent in 2010 to 1.15 percent in 2013. More than 86 percent of impoverished families in six model communes have escaped poverty.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development and head of the Central Steering Committee for the target programme Tran Thanh Nam asked the city to reform production using technological innovations, which has proved very successful elsewhere.

On the occasion, many municipal units signed an agreement to help five districts become new rural areas.-

Deputy minister affirms resolve in improving personnel quality

Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Tran Anh Tuan has re-affirmed the Government’s resolve to improve the quality of the contingent of public workers.

In a recent interview granted to the Vietnam News Agency, the deputy minister said all ministries, sectors and localities have taken measures to enforce the laws on public and civil workers. One of the measures is to build a set of standardized qualifications required of public and civil servants at both central and grassroots levels. A number of public agencies and local administrations have conducted examinations to recruit public servants to ensure fairness and transparency.

Deputy minister Tuan, however, admitted that the quality of the contingent of public servants still leaves much to be desired, particularly in terms of the sense of responsibility and working style and capacity.

He said that is the reason why the Prime Minister has issued an instructive on fighting negative phenomena in the management of public workers.

He stressed that those workers who have low sense of responsibility and fail to fulfil their duties must be sacked while leaders of public agencies should set good examples for their subordinates in order to enhance the quality of public services, meeting the demand of the public.

The deputy minister also called on the public as well as the mass media to monitor the work of public servants, contributing to building a healthy and transparent system of public administration.-

Vietnam Youth-Students Association debuts in Malaysia

The Vietnamese Youth and Students Association (VYSA) has been established in Malaysia to mark the 83rd anniversary of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union.

The association elected an 11-member executive board, with Tran Quoc Huy, a research student from the HELF University, as its president.

Addressing a recent inauguration ceremony, Huy noted the organisation gathers all young people and students to work and study to contribute to the homeland. It protects the legitimate rights of young Vietnamese people and students, and develops equal ties with other students associations in Malaysia.  

Nguyen Hong Phuong, deputy secretary of the Party Committee of the Vietnamese Embassy in Malaysia, welcomed the founding of the association which she said is of great importance as more young Vietnamese people and students are coming to work and study in Malaysia.

The Vietnamese embassy will create all possible conditions for the association to operate and strengthen cooperation with their foreign partners, she said.

HCM City officials mull reservoirs to combat damaging floods

The HCM City administration expects to reduce by 30 per cent the area that is regularly flooded by building 30 large reservoirs in suburban areas and hundreds of smaller ones in urban areas.

Officials from the HCM City Steering Centre for the Urban Flood Control Programme said they would submit zoning plans for this to the People's Committee for approval in the second quarter. But they did not mention a likely schedule for the work.

The reservoirs are expected to store tens of millions of cubic metres of water during the rainy season.

According to Do Tan Long of the centre, since rainfall in the city keeps increasing because of the impact of climate change, building the reservoirs is a good solution.

They will help ease the train on the drainage system during heavy rains and high tides, which have for years causing flooding.

The large reservoirs would be funded by public funds while money for the small ones would be "mobilised from people," he said.

Some existing reservoirs that were unused would also be used again, he added.

A plan to build reservoirs was approved by the city Party Committee three years ago, but it remains on paper.

At a recent meeting with the city government, Le Thanh Hai, the Party Committee secretary, said no reservoirs had been built since, indicating a "weakness" in governance.

Flood prevention was among six major programmes the city planned to work on between 2011 and 2015. While the number of areas that traditionally flood has been reducing gradually over the last few years, many new areas are becoming affected instead.

At the meeting, Le Hoang Quan, chairman of the city People's Committee, admitted that the flood prevention programme was not really sustainable.

According to the People's Committee, in the past three years the city completed several flood prevention projects, including construction of a sluice gate in the Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe Canal and 335 kilometres of sewerage and installation of 1,077 valves to keep water out during high tides.

Quan said the reservoirs would get priority and be allocated funds.

Between 2011 and 2013, the city spent VND1.57 trillion (US$74.7 million) on flood prevention.

Authorities promote use of quality motorcycle helmets

A campaign to issue quality crash helmets to children and their parents will start at four primary schools in HCM City to raise awareness of the need to wear helmets that actually protect in case of a crash.

Launched on Friday, it will be carried out by the National Traffic Safety Committee in co-operation with Ministry of Education and Training and Asia Injury Prevention (AIP) Foundation with funding from US healthcare company Abbott.

The four schools are Cau Xang and Tan Quy Tay in Binh Chanh District and Truong Dinh and Nguyen Thai Binh in District 12, where only 20-30 per cent of students wear helmets when they are dropped off or picked up on motorbikes by adults.

From now until June, students at the four schools will get 4,289 free helmets and teachers, 238. Students' parents will be offered quality helmets at a subsidised price in exchange for their old ones.

Students as well as their parents and teachers will be trained in the right way to wear a helmet and taught about the value of wearing quality helmets through workshops and activities outside classrooms.

Hoardings exhorting the use of quality helmets will be put up in front of the four schools.

In the next two years the campaign will be expanded to the Mekong Delta and Ha Noi.

Mirjam Sidik, AIP Foundation's chief executive officer, said even though adult helmet use rates are high in the country, the World Health Organization found that 82 per cent of helmets worn on Viet Nam's roads are sub-standard.

"We are doing more to encourage motorcyclists, including children, to wear standard helmets that can protect their heads effectively in an event of a crash," she said, adding that the project represents this shift.

In 2010, Cho Ray Hospital released statistics on the deaths of children and teenagers due to road accidents.

There were 4,000 fatalities of which nearly 2,000 people aged 15 to 19 and 1,436 aged less than 14 died of brain injuries.

Vocational schools need accreditation

To ensure quality, vocational schools must affiliate themselves with agencies like the Viet Nam National University's Centre for Education Accreditation, educational experts said.

Speaking at a conference on ensuring quality at job training schools held last Friday by Dai Viet Vocational School, Dr Nguyen Kim Dung, deputy head of the HCM City University of Education's Institute for Educational Research, said after accreditation, a school carries out many changes to improve.

"I completely believe that accreditation will help schools become better and ensure training quality if they strictly adhere to accreditation norms," she added.

Dr Pham Xuan Thanh, deputy head of the Ministry of Education and Training's General Department for Educational Testing and Accreditation, admitted that accreditation to ensure quality has not been a focus for professional schools.

Only 99 of 294 such schools in the country have completed even the first step in the accreditation process, that of self-assessment, he said.

The self-assessment showed that training quality is low, he added.

Dung said the low training quality and failure of graduates to get jobs are causing a drop in the popularity of vocational schools.

But the schools themselves blamed the higher intake by universities and colleges each year.

According to the ministry's Professional Education Department, the number of applications to professional secondary schools nationwide has been plunging. For instance, the number fell by almost a third to around 180,000 last year.

Because of the difficulty in attracting candidates, three private schools in Da Nang closed down and some in HCM City were sold to new owners.

Dung said many professional schools seem to forget their main mission of training people to become a technicians or skilled worker in various occupations.

If they focus on ensuring their students master professional skills, "more and more learners … [will] apply."

Since learners' needs are varied, "vocational schools do not need to worry about getting candidates," she said, adding that many graduates and post-graduates are applying to professional schools proves this.

Professor Vu Gia Hien, rector of Au Viet Intermediate School, said that the need for industrial workers is very high not only in Viet Nam but also many other countries.

The General Department of Vocational Training said the country's ratio of university graduates to vocational trainees is 1:3 as against 1:10 in neighbouring countries, meaning the country lacks skilled workers and technicians to ensure socio-economic development.

According to HCM City's Centre for Human Resource Forecast and Labour Information, city-based businesses will need 270,000 more workers by 2025, with 34 per cent of having vocational training.

Ninh Thuan halts ops at re-opened mine

The People's Committee of Ninh Thuan Province has told the Quang Thuan - Ninh Thuan Co. to halt operations at their titanium-zircon mining area following its recent reopening.

The statement was made by Vo Dai, deputy chairman of the province, during a recent press conference.

The residents from the communes of Son Hai 1 and Son Hai 2 had protested at the plant for six days, since its reopening on March 20.

They also destroyed plant facilities in an effort to stop the company from operating.

The residents complained to the provincial People's Committee about damage to the environment caused by the plant, including landslides, less underground water and the spreading of sand flies.

The mining area was closed two years earlier for causing pollution and due to a lack of required legal documents.

Transportation costs among region's highest

Small-scale operations, improper infrastructure and a lack of co-operation among transport enterprises has inflated Viet Nam's transportation costs above that of neighbouring countries, according to a seminar held yesterday.

Speaking at the seminar titled "Transportation costs in Viet Nam" held by the Transport Ministry, deputy minister Le Dinh Tho said transport costs in the country were the highest in Southeast Asia, but few studies had been conducted to clarify the state of the status quo.

Typically, transportation costs account for less than 10 per cent of gross domestic production in developed countries, with the percentage in developing countries around 14-15 per cent.

He said that lower transportation costs were vital for the country's development and competitiveness, especially given the increasingly tough regional and global environment.

Nguyen Xuan Thuy, deputy head of Transportation Department under Viet Nam Road Administration, said Viet Nam had around 11,000 transport enterprises, including 8,000 freight enterprises and 3,000 passenger-vehicle companies.

However, most of the enterprises were operating on a small-scale with less than 10 vehicles, he said.

"The small enterprises usually don't have a business network or channel to contact clients, which resulted in inefficient operations," he said.

For example, according to the Transport Development and Strategy Institute, around 70 per cent of trucks carried goods one way and were empty on return journeys. This increased the cost of transporting goods on the roads by 30 per cent.

The costs were also pushed up because providers were using old coaches or trucks that were not fuel efficient and required a frequent maintenance – which raised the risk of traffic accidents, he said.

Moreover, the need to develop a depot system to gather and distribute goods on long-distance routes had fallen by the wayside, he said, explaining that ferrying huge amounts of small trucks on long routes would be more costly. Small, scattered depots required more time to collect, load and unload goods, he said.

According to the Viet Nam Automobile Transportation Association, in the last 15 years, the price of passenger transportation had risen sevenfold in Viet Nam, not accounting for inflated prices during peak holiday periods.

The higher prices were blamed on the increasing cost of operating cars, buying fuel, employing labour and paying road fees.

According to a World Bank report, logistical costs in Viet Nam were estimated to account for around 20 per cent of gross domestic production. By contrast, the proportion in the US was 9.2 per cent, while being 12 per cent in Europe and 13.5 per cent in Mexico. The global average is around 13.8 per cent.

The report shows that logistics operations in Viet Nam are relatively high when compared with regional peers like China, Malaysia, and Thailand. It is estimated that Viet Nam's shippers spend approximately US$100 million annually on extra inventory carrying costs incurred due to import-export clearance delays. This amount is projected to reach $180 million by 2020. Several factors were found to be fuelling high costs, including cumbersome and inconsistently applied government regulations and major supply-demand imbalances in infrastructure provision.

These drawbacks can be reverted if the country adopts a number of actions, such as minimizing paper-based processes in the customs and technical clearance of imports and exports, the report said. It also advocated for Viet Nam to create "multimodal logistics corridors" where containerized flows on trucks or barges would be able to move on adequate infrastructure and with minimal regulatory delays. Opening the logistics market and promoting a more sustainable supply-demand balance in the trucking industry would also help.

Ammonia hits groundwater in Ha Nam

Ammonia in groundwater in the northern Ha Nam Province exceeds permitted levels by hundreds of times, according to officials of the provincial Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

Water testing conducted on 15 water samples by the department last December revealed that ammonia contamination in groundwater was found at numerous locations in the province.

Further, the concentrations of ammonia in Bo De and Boi Cau communes in Binh Luc District were 700 and 600 times higher, respectively, than allowable limits.

The districts of Binh Luc, Duy Tien, and Ly Nhan have reported the highest levels of ammonia concentrations in groundwater, the department said.

Viet Nam's standards stipulate that water with an ammonia level of below 0.1mg per litre is safe for consumption.

A higher level, though, has been associated with causing cancers, said officials.

The Department of Natural Resources and Environment has instructed the Centre for Environmental Monitoring to conduct water analysis twice a year. The results must be publicised so that responsible agencies can introduce effective measures to eliminate the contamination.

Local authorities will also call for support from international organisations to stop the contamination of the ground water.

Meanwhile, residents are advised to use rain water for their daily consumption.

Chemicals are now being used to treat ammonia-contaminated water in Ly Nhan District's Nhan Khang Commune medical clinic, but they can not be widely used due to their high costs.

Data shows that almost 82 per cent of the local population has been provided with safe water.

Additionally, all residents living along Chau River, where ammonia concentrations were reported to be the highest, are now using safe water, reported the department.

Over 110,000 suburban Hanoians to finally access clean water

More than 110,000 people in Hanoi’s outskirt districts of Ba Vi, Me Linh, Phuc Tho, Thanh Oai and Thuong Tin will have access to clean water in 2014, with some supply facilities set to be built there.

The municipal People’s Committee has approved five projects, which aim to develop inter-communal clean water supply systems in the five districts.

Accordingly, a facility with a capacity of 2,800 cubic metres a day will benefit over 14,000 locals in the Co Do and Phong Van communes of Ba Vi district.

It will be built in 2014-2015 with a total investment of over 82 billion VND (3.85 million USD) sourced from the 2013-2015 National Rural Water Supply and Sanitation National Target Programme.

Another facility will be also built under this programme in Me Linh district’s Thanh Lam, Dai Thinh and Tam Dong communes with about 36,000 residents.

Once completed, the projects are expected to promote a sustainable clean water model for rural residential areas, thus further fostering socio-economic development in the city.