Firecrackers' inspections stepped up ahead of festivals

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has asked local governments to clamp down on the illegal trade, production and use of firecrackers as the traditional Tet (lunar new year) festival fast approaches.

Under the Prime Minister's official message, more inspections should be carried out at border gates, train stations and ports to prevent illegal imports of fire crackers from reaching Viet Nam.

Chairmen of People's Committees in provinces and cities will be held to account if firecracker activities spiral out of control on their watch.

In the PM's message, it was estimated that police seized around 27,500 kilos of firecrackers and arrested 2,100 suspects between February 2011 and August 2012.

Poor local management was blamed for the heightened level of firecracker activity during the last Tet festival in January, and the Government is keen to avoid a repeat performance.

The Prime Minister also assigned the Ministry of Information and Communications to co-operate with relevant agencies and disseminate to people, especially youngsters and students, the importance of obeying these regulations.

Viet Nam's Government banned the production, trade and use of firecrackers in 1994, but problems still persist.

Three weeks ago, northeastern Quang Ninh Province's Police seized nearly two tonnes of firecrackers that had been illegally imported from China.

Police continue to hunt the five suspects who transported the firecrackers in a Ford Transit car.

Enhance measures to access family planning

More than 200 million women in the world's poorest countries including Viet Nam, especially the young or socially disadvantaged, did not have access to family planning services and information, heard a conference in Ha Noi yesterday, Nov 15.

Making voluntary family planning available to everyone in developing countries would reduce costs for maternal and newborn health care by US$11.3 billion annually, according to the State of World Population 2012, launched yesterday by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The report also finds that financial resources for family planning have declined and contraceptive use has remained mostly steady.

However, there are signs of progress. Last July, at the London Summit on Family Planning, donor countries and foundations together pledged $2.6 billion to make it available to 120 million women in developing countries by 2020. Developing countries pledged $2 billion.

In Viet Nam, data from the Ministry of Health and other population-based surveys indicated that Viet Nam had made sustainable progress on family planning by integrating it into general health services.

However, certain population groups such as adolescents, young and unmarried people, migrants and ethnic minority people had limited access to family planning services and information.

As a result, a significant number of pregnancies are unexpected, especially among the young and unmarried groups, who accounted for 85 per cent of unwanted pregnancies.

Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Viet Tien said: "Ensuring national access to family planning is protecting human rights."
He also suggested that the gap between the demand for family planning and the availability of services must be bridged, starting with the most vulnerable.

Data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, undertaken by the Viet Nam General Statistics Office in 2010, showed that 11.2 per cent of married women had no access to contraception. The figure was 34.3 per cent among unmarried women.

Takeshi Kasai, the World Health Organisation representative in Viet Nam, suggested that the Government should adopt a financial policy to support a comprehensive family planning programme and provide national funding to ensure adequate supply and distribution of contraceptives.

Tien said that the government, civil society, medical service providers and communities must make sure that voluntary family planning is available to all who want it.

Tien also suggested diversifying family planning methods and enhancing the responsibility of health workers to inform the public about the choice of methods available.

VN has 15,000 students in US

The number of Vietnamese students studying in US colleges and universities has increased by 4.6 per cent from last year, according to the Institute of International Education.

In its recently released Open Doors 2012 annual report, the institute said that only seven other countries in the world send more students to the US, with more than 15,500 Vietnamese people currently studying there.

This is the 12th consecutive year of growth. More than 70 per cent of students are studying as undergraduates.

Ministry prepares for clean, strong public admin system

The Ministry of Home Affairs will add a new tool to its armoury for measuring administrative reform progress next month, when it releases the Public Administration Reform (PAR) index.

Speaking at the annual public administration forum held by the Ministry and the United Nations Development Program yesterday, Nov 15, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Nguyen Tien Dinh said the goal of the index, which will measure reform progress for 2011-20, is to build a "clean and strong" public administration system.

Since 2011, the PAR index has been piloted at three ministries and six provinces, where it has provided newly-developed criteria and indicators separately at both ministry and provincial level.

The scoring of the index at the local level also uses surveys to take into account the opinions of citizens and enterprises.

"As we all know, what does not get measured, might not improve," said UNDP Country Director Louise Chamberlain. "(PAR index) provides a voice for citizens, on the quality of services they get and their overall satisfaction with administrative agencies."

The PAR Index monitors and evaluates public administration reform performance within ministries and provincial governments, letting clients (i.e. the general public) assess these reform efforts.

During the decade-long PAR program, efforts will also focus on areas such as the quality of civil servants and public officers, institutional reform and administration modernisation.

According to Dinh Duy Hoa, general director of the Ministry of Home Affairs' Public Administration Reform, the ministry will also push forward for ministries and localities to design a mechanism that evaluates civil servants based on their work performance by 2013.

Besides PAR Index, there are two other tools used to measure public administrative reforms: Provincial Competitiveness Index, which includes the views of businesses and the private sector, and the Public Administrative Performance Index, which measures the experiences of citizens when interacting with public officials.

Ministers agree to closely co-operate to fight drugs

Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia today reviewed their fight against drugs and the implementation of a Memorandum of Understanding signed at the 11th Trilateral / Bilateral Ministerial Meeting in Laos last year.

This year's meeting on drug control and prevention was hosted by Viet Nam and attracted the attendance of over 90 representatives from the three counbtries.

Speaking at the event, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said drugs were a threat all over the world, especially in the ASEAN community, and could cause social disorder and fatal diseases such as HIV if no action was taken.

Phuc added the three countries were being greatly affected by the Golden Triangle, the largest opium producing area in the world, where traffickers and smugglers took advantage of thetough terrain to hide their activities.

Phuc stressed that close co-operation between Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia would be the most crucial to stopping the spread of drugs.

Also, the increasing number of opium poppies, twice as many as 2006, and the emergence of a new breed of modern criminals required close co-operation between border provincial authorities.

Senior Lieutenant General of the Ministry of Public Security Dang Van Hieu said even though the number of drug trafficking cases uncovered in border provinces had been increasing, the quantity of new-born drug criminals kept growing.

Hieu said as many as 2,481 drug cases with about 435 kilos of opium and 49,900 ecstasy pills were seized last year.
Participants discussed a joint statement on increasing co-operation between the three countries in the fight against drugs, establishing a Drug-Free ASEAN by 2015, and launching anti-drug campaigns in border provinces.

Tomorrow, the joint statement is expected to be announced.

Unemployment remains challenging problem

The economic downturn continued to have negative impacts in Viet Nam, with unemployment remaining high since the beginning of the year, experts have said.

Dr Nguyen Thi Lan Huong, head of the Institute of Labour Science and Social Affairs, told Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper that this year, cities had seen an upward trend in unemployment as a result of economic woes and public dependence on unemployment insurance.

The macroeconomics newsletter number seven released by the National Assembly's Economics Committee in October revealed that during the first half of the year, the number of businesses which ceased operations reached over 26,300, an increase of 5.4 per cent against the same period last year.

Among which, the number of businesses which ended up closing completely increased by over 35 per cent.

According to the newsletter, a large number of businesses had to either reduce or delay production or even went bankrupt as they fell short of funding because of increasing inventories.

While the first six months saw an increase in the number of enterprises going out of business, the number of new businesses also decreased by 12.5 per cent against the same period last year.

The impact of the economic downturn in terms of unemployment was markedly seen in Ha Noi, which saw over 730 enterprises close and 1,900 others temporarily halt operations during the past 10 months, according to the Ha Noi People's Committee.

As a result, about 41,000 people had lost their jobs so far this year.

The number of people registering for unemployment benefits in Ha Noi in the first 10 months had risen to 20,638 people, an increase of about 20 per cent against last year, said Nguyen Thi Kim Loan, head of the Unemployment Insurance Section under the Ha Noi Job Employment Centre.

Unemployment insurance has paid VND172 billion (US$13.4 million) for 16,901 cases in Ha Noi during that time, added Loan.

The majority of people to receive unemployment insurance benefits were aged from 25-40 years old. Unemployed college or university degree holders made up 35 per cent of total claims.

In the southern province of Dong Nai, the number of unemployment claims in the first ten months reached 41,000, an increase of 78 per cent against last year's figure, according to Tran Thi Thuy Tram, head of the Employment Insurance Section of Dong Nai Job Promotion Centre.

Dong Nai Province spent over VND200 billion (nearly US$ 10million) on unemployment insurance by the end of October, a figure 2.4 times higher than the amount spent for the whole of last year, said Pham Minh Thanh, deputy director of Dong Nai Social Insurance Department.

Hospital admits error in death of twins

Bac Lieu general hospital has admitted fault in the deaths of two baby twins earlier this month in the southern province.

The twin's mother, 30, gave birth prematurely on November 3, but one twin, weighing 700g, had been dead in the womb for more than 20 days. The second baby, weighing 1.6kg, died three days after birth.

Hospital staff had previously refused to admit her for care when she thought there was a problem, telling her that a check-up proved she was in normal health and the pregnancy was only 28 weeks, about four to five weeks before the due date.

Another earthquake hits Quang Nam hydro plant

A 4.7 Richter magnitude earthquake struck the central province of Quang Nam's Bac Tra My District and Song Tranh hydro-power plant yesterday, confirmed Nguyen Hong Phuong, deputy director of the Earthquake and Tsunami Warning Centre under the Institute of Geophysics.

With a seismic focus at a depth of 6km, the earthquake was the strongest of 20 earthquakes and tremors to strike the area, he said.

However, the quake only lasted for about 10 seconds, according to experts from the institute.

"Experts have concluded that the sequence of tremors in the area were due to seismic activity caused by water stored in the hydropower plant reservoir," Phuong explained.

The quake could also be felt 120km away in Da Nang.

"I felt the floor shaking while I was working in the office. It was like a big truck had driven past," said Vu Hong Thuy, a resident in Da Nang.

No injuries or damage to the dam and residential areas had been reported, Dang Phong, chairman of Bac Tra My district's People's Committee, told Viet Nam News.

"We have found cracks in the walls and beams or girders of over 100 houses, but I have yet to hear about any serious damage," he confirmed.

Experts from the institute also said at a meeting in Quang Nam Province last month that the sequence of earthquakes had not exceeded the reservoir's design limit.

The management board of the hydropower plant plans to repair the affected houses for local people.

Son La assists poor families to build new homes

Financial aid has been provided for the construction of as many as 23,800 houses for poor minority families in the northern province of Son La since 2009, the provincial People's Committee have announced.

The programme was first launched three years ago with the aim of providing assistance to ethnic minority groups including Mong, Dao, Kho Mu, La Ha, Xinh Mun, Lao, Thai, and Muong. 3,200 new houses have been finished so far this year.

Around VND366 billion (US$17.5 million) has been raised for the programme from various sources. The State Budget accounts for two thirds of the total with nearly VND222 billion (US$10.5 million). Loans from provincial bank allocations for social policies contributed VND127 billion ($6 million). The remaining amount has been provided by enterprises and communities.

The provincial People's Committee have said that the aid is equivalent to between VND7.2 million ($342) and VND8.4 million ($400) per household.

They added that the province is attempting to complete work on another 2,800 homes before the Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday next February.

VNN/VNS