Cycling across Vietnam for environmental protection

More than 100 people will join the 36-day ‘Hanh Trinh Xanh’ (Go Green) cycling event scheduled to travel through 26 provinces in Vietnam between July 2 and August 8.  

This was announced by the Institute of Oriental Studies in Hanoi on June 10.

The tour aims to raise public awareness of traffic safety and environmental protection.

Along the way, participants will help build 10km of rural roads and plant six hectares of forest in the central coastal region and southwestern provinces.

They will also present gifts to 30 families and victims of Agent Orange dioxin.

Four such trans-Vietnam cycling tours have been successfully organized from 2008-2011.

Official gets warning for deputy’s gambling

Tran Anh Viet, director of the Soc Trang Province Department of Transport, has received a warning for lack of responsibility in detecting gambling activities by his former deputy, Nguyen Thanh Leo, who has been prosecuted for the offense.

The warning was announced Monday by the provincial Party Committee’s Commission for Inspection, a source told Tuoi Tre.

According to the commission, Leo had shown abnormal signs related to gambling for a long time, but Viet failed to detect them so that measures could be taken to prevent Leo from continuing to participate in the wrongdoings.

Gambling in any form is illegal under Vietnam’s law except in casinos, where only foreigners are allowed to play.

As previously reported, Leo and Tran Van Tan, former director of a drivers’ training center in Soc Trang, were caught playing Chinese chess for high stakes: VND1-5 billion (US$47,600-238,000) per game last year.

The two men were arrested on December 22 while they were playing at a local café. By the time the police showed up, Leo had lost VND22 billion ($1.05 million) to Tan but had only paid Tan VND5 billion.

The police also arrested two other men, Nguyen Thanh Hung, 50, a loan-shark and a leading gambling broker in Soc Trang, and his son Nguyen Thanh Truyen, who had been hired by Tan to force Leo to pay his debt and threaten to kill all of his family if he failed to do so.

Leo had been head of Soc Trang city’s Board of Management of Construction Works and secretary of Ward 6’s Party Committee for many years before he was appointed to his current post.

After his arrest, Leo confessed to the police that he had also played Chinese chess with Muoi, deputy chairman of the city Party Committee’s Commission for Inspection, for money.

Leo also told the police that he had lost VND2.5 billion to Muoi and had paid him VND1.9 billion.

Muoi was arrested in early January.

Health checks cut maternal deaths

Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Viet Tien has called for obstetricians to pay more attention to health checks and diagnosis of pregnant women to anticipate potential problems and limit the death rate.

Tien's call followed statistics showing a high percentage of deaths in child-bearing mothers, including a 34-year-old woman and her new-born baby in Kinh Bac Hospital in the northern city of Bac Ninh on April 20.

The ministry's research showed that her death was the result of amniotic fluid embolism which could not have been predicted.
The National Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynaecology has cured only a few cases, yet it has the equipment.

Another pregnant woman who died in the central province of Quang Ngai on the same day suffered from cardiovascular disease.
If the patient was moved to a central hospital, she may have been saved, he said. "The proper management of patients and moving them to appropriate hospitals could limit mortality rates," said Tien.

In the fourth month of pregnancy, women with cardiovascular, lung and liver problems can suffer heart failure, lung oedema or brain haemorrhage.

In the last month of pregnancy, women also face the likelihood of placenta previa bleeding and a burst uterus, both of which need intensive care.

A good obstetrics doctor must diagnose and make timely decisions if a pregnant woman showed signs of likely problems, said Tien.

The doctor could decide the woman should deliver in a central hospital or a local one and that she should have a caesarean rather than a natural delivery.

"The country's obstetrics and gynaecological care is quite good, however, deliveries can be problematic," he said.

The most recent death was on Friday when a 33-year-old woman died in the Mo Duc District Hospital in central Quang Ngai Province.

Yesterday, the two midwives in the case were suspended from work.

The present maternal mortality rate is 69 per 100,000. In 2002, the rate was 165/100,000.

Authorities stop shrimp project in UNESCO reserve

Construction supplies were already on site when officials in a Ho Chi Minh City district ordered investors suspend their shrimping project because it overlapped with protected land.

Cho Lon Investment and Development Joint Stock company (CHAID CORP) had wanted to breed whiteleg shrimp using Singaporean technology but did not have the license, authorities in Can Gio District have reported.

They said the project would have impeded on the Can Gio mangrove swamp, a UNESCO-endorsed world biosphere reserve, as well as protected forest subzone 5A in An Nghia Hamlet, An Thoi Dong commune.

Le Van Thom, deputy chairman of the district People’s Committee, said he visited the project site Thursday. There he saw workers transporting construction materials and building shrimp-breeding pools, Thom said.

He said the district immediately suspended all activities related to the aquaculture project and directed the Can Gio Preventive Forest Management Board to draft a report about the project’s illegal occupation.

The move comes after the HCMC People’s Committee last month asked agencies to send opinions on the legality of the project to the city’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, which would then report to the city. But Truong Trung Thu, head of the department’s Fisheries Division, said he had received no feedback as of Saturday.

The forest had been District 5 Farm until 1995, when the city transferred management to the Cho Lon Import, Export and Investment Joint Stock One-Member Company Limited, which holds a 20-percent share of CHAID CORP.

Nearly 2,000 homes face evacuation

More than 1,700 local households around Lai Chau Hydro-electric Plant will be evacuated in the first quarter of next year in the northern mountainous province of Lai Chau.

The households are planned to move to 35 resettlement areas in Muong Te District.

Systems of tap water and road construction are expected to begin in October and finish before the households resettle in the areas.

The construction of the US$1.7-billion Lai Chau Hydroelectric Plant began in January 2011 and is set to finish in 2017.
3,600 unemployed women get jobs

Around 3,600 unemployed women whose husbands are local fishermen have been provided jobs under a new scheme of the southernmost Ca Mau Province People's Committee.

The jobs include weaving fishing net, drying fishes, or processing sea products with an income of VND1.2-3 million (US$57-144).
The province plans to develop post-fishing services to provide jobs for about 3,000 more women whose husbands are fishermen by 2015.

Plaza man arrested for deception

The chief executive officer of the Bac Ninh – based An Son Plaza Co Ltd has been arrested for allegedly deceptive acts after months of hiding, the provincial police said yesterday, June 11.

The man, Nguyen Luong Tuan, was accused of selling his office's leased land without legal permission, mortgaging the land to the Viet Nam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development for a loan without paying it or the interest by the due date, and signing a contract of stock transfers which he failed to implement.

Tuan had allegedly taken nearly VND80 billion (US$3.8 million) from his victims, run away from his province, and become a wanted fugitive before he was recently captured by the police.

Food poisoning hits 50 wedding guests

More than 50 people were treated and discharged from hospital yesterday after they suffered from food poisoning at a wedding in Hong Tien commune, Pho Yen District, Thai Nguyen Province.

The guests developed symptoms such as headache, stomach ache, dizziness, diarrhea and nausea. The family said they prepared the wedding meals at home.

Local authorities and relevant agencies visited the home and took food samples for testing.

US institutions mull wider aid to Vietnam dioxin victims

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been collecting ideas, recommendations and comments from interested individuals and organizations to help develop a comprehensive, multiyear plan for Agent Orange-related activities in Vietnam.

The work is meant to resolve difficult and painful issues related to the legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam as the result of the 80 million liters of Agent Orange / Dioxin chemicals the US Army sprayed in Vietnam from 1961 – 1973.

The Veterans For Peace (VFP) -- an educational and humanitarian organization dedicated to the abolishment of war – has called on USAID to provide stronger support to the Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) system, which was begun in Vietnam in the mid-1980s and engages in frequent and active dialogues with the Vietnam Association of Agent Orange Victims (VAVA) for delivery of services and assistance to Agent Orange victims nationwide.

The VFP has also asked USAID to promote greater collaboration between American institutions and Vietnamese partners to increase the capacity of Vietnamese institutions to provide needed services at all levels for people with disabilities.

These may include speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, early detection and intervention, and community based nursing and rehabilitation. At the same time, USAID should facilitate collaboration between US and Vietnamese training agencies to strengthen capacity and diversify training curriculums to bring about greater positive impacts and results from USAID funding and other support.

It has also been suggested that USAID expand its geographic reach in Vietnam.

Specifically, besides its focus primarily on the Da Nang area up to now, the organization should ensure that future funding and program efforts do not neglect communities throughout Vietnam that are not hotspots, and which today show little or no evidence of dioxin contamination.

Mother, two children die in house fire

A mother and her two children were burned to death early yesterday after a fire broke out in their two storey-house in central Nha Trang City.

According to initial investigations, the cause of the fire was unknown, but it got out of control after a motorbike petrol tank exploded. It took firefighters two hours to ward off the blaze.

Police are investigating.

Crew saved from fishing boat fire

Thirty eight crew were rescued yesterday after a fishing boat caught fire early Sunday, about 130 nautical miles off Khanh Hoa Province, Viet Nam Coast Radio Station said.

The crew are scheduled to reach Ky Ha port in Quang Nam Province this morning, June 12.

The fire on boat QNA 91054 began with an explosion, the cause of which has yet to be identified. The crew were rescued by a nearby fishing boat.

VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre