HCM City firms seek 95,000 new employees

Companies in HCM City need around 95,000 new employees for the last quarter of the year, according to the HCM City Centre for Forecasting Manpower Needs and Labour Market Information.

Of that number, 20,000 are seasonal jobs only and 60 per cent are jobs that require graduates of universities, colleges and vocational schools, Tran Anh Tuan, the centre's deputy, has said. The remaining jobs are for manual labourers.

More employees are needed in food processing, IT, electronics, telecommunications, construction and architecture as well as services, marketing, sale, education, training, libraries and healthcare.

For the first nine months of the year, the number of employees needed rose by 16.64 per cent compared to the same period last year.

Although salaries have been raised, the increasing cost of living has affected the pocketbooks of employees.

Employees are changing jobs more frequently, leaving companies with an unstable workforce.

Many employees, especially at small- and medium-sized companies in textiles and garments, were always short of labour, Tuan said.

Employment demand for the first nine months increased 59 per cent over the same period last year, he added.

The city created 235,500 jobs for the first nine months of the year, according to the Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

It also provided training to labourers in rural areas. At least 2,818 people were trained and more than 50 per cent of them were looking for a job after training.

Tuan said the unemployment rate remained at 5 per cent. He noted that many jobs that require highly skilled employees could not find qualified workers.

However, many new graduates from universities, colleges and vocational schools found it difficult to find a job in certain fields where demand was low and supply was sufficient, such as accounting, he added.

2 Chinese sentenced for illegal gun possession

The People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday pronounced a 3-year jail sentence to Huang Chih Cheng and 2 years and 6 months imprisonment to Lu Chun Hsien on charges of illegal gun possession.

Sam Ung Mui, Huang’s wife - a Vietnamese of Chinese origin, was granted 1-year-and-a-half suspended sentence for the same charge.

Customs officers in Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat Airport last April discovered a gun in the checked-in luggage of a Chinese national Lu Chun Hsien on a flight bound for Taiwan.

They detained him for possessing a forbidden weapon and trying to bring it on board an airplane.

At the court, Lu Chun Hsien declared that Huang and Mui had asked him carry a package to Taiwan but he did not know what was inside the package.

According to newswire VnExpress, the couple, on the other hand, told the court that on April 8, 2011 they visited the tomb of Mui’s late father where they found a bag with a gun inside. Mui suggested handing it over to local authorities but Huang refused. When Lu (a nephew of Huang’s ex-wife) saw the gun, Lu liked it and asked Huang to give it to him as a souvenir.

Sai Gon rail station offers 90% discounts

Sai Gon Railway Station announced on Thursday that it would discount tickets by 50 per cent to 90 per cent for those who book tickets on-line on www.vetau.com.vn and pay via Vietinbank.

Discounted tickets will be available from 8am to 2pm on October 10 for those who plan to travel between October 15 to December 31.

Nigerian sentenced to death for heroin trafficking

Two death sentences, a life sentence, and some other verdicts have been given to members of a drug-trafficking ring smuggling heroin from abroad into Vietnam.

The Appeal Court of the Supreme People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City Thursday handed down a life sentence to Chukwuma Obi Remy, an Nigerian national, and a death sentence to Doan Nguyen Minh Chau, a Vietnamese man, for heroin trafficking.

Earlier, at the first instance trial in last April, Remy, 41, was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment and Chau, 32, received a life sentence.

After the trial, the two and other defendants appealed against their sentences, but the appeal court rejected the appeals while accepting the proposal of the Supreme People’s Court to give heavier sentences to Remy and Chau.

Accordingly, the court maintained the death sentence against 33-year-old Nnaji David Ete, a Nigerian national; the life sentence to 31-year-old Phan Thi Thanh Le, Ete’s Vietnamese wife; and the sentences of 15 to 20 years for Regina Whing Wiri, a Zimbabwean, and two other Nigerians, Okapor Peter Chuma, 36, and Nnamdi Aghaji, 31.

According to the indictment, Nnaji David Ete arrived in Vietnam on a tourism visa in 2004, but he illegally stayed on in Vietnam and married Le. The couple later set up a transcontinental drug trafficking ring.

The ring’s members bought heroin in various countries, including China, India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Brazil. Le then hired some jobless Vietnamese people, including women, to go to those countries to bring the heroin back to Ho Chi Minh City.

The traffickers hid heroin in slippers, dictionaries, the bottoms of suitcases, handbags, paintings and clothing to avoid detection.

After receiving the smuggled heroin in HCMC, Ete and Le distributed it to Chau and others for sale.

Following a tip-off from the public, the police investigated and cracked down on the ring in June 2009.

Nnaji David Ete confessed his ring had bought and sold nearly 11.5 kilograms heroin, but the court said the actual amount should be higher.

Vietnam will official apply lethal injection in place of the firing squads from November 1, 2011, under the Law on Execution of Criminal Verdict that took effect on July 1, 2011.

Stranded boat crew rescued

Twelve crew members and 27 passengers on board Duc Minh 18 boat, which was stranded on a sandbank in Lach Loi Port, Thanh Hoa Province, were rescued by local Border Guard on Friday.

Hoang Van Son, head of the Border Guard Team II, said lives could have been lost if Typhoon Nesat had hit before the passengers and crew had been taken off the boat.

The vessel was transporting goods from northern Ninh Binh Province to Nha Trang City.

Work starts on Delta experimental farm

An Giang Plant Protection Company and Syngenta has began construction on the Dinh Thanh experimental farm in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Province of An Giang earlier this week.

The 20-ha farm in Thoai Son District's Dinh Thanh Commune will meet international standards and cost VND80 billion (US$3.8 million). It will be Syngenta's largest experimental farm in the Asia-Pacific region.

The farm will conduct research on rice varieties and soil treatment, pesticides, fertilisers, agricultural engineering, irrigation and post-harvest preservation. It will provide farming techniques to 10,000 farmers and agricultural officials each year after it is put into operation next June.

Headmaster faces dock for embezzlement

The police of Huong Tra District, Thua Thien-Hue Province have filed charges against the principal and the chief accountant of Primary School No. 1 for allegedly appropriating nearly $2,000 from the school’s budget.

Trinh Minh The, 46, the headmaster, and Hoang Thi Nhung, 32, are charged with “embezzlement” under Article 278 of the Penal Code, local police reported.

Hue was arrested on September 29, while Nhung has been let on bail as she is taking care of her under-36-month baby.

According to the indictment, the two defendants have signed some contracts with local private businesses in Hue City to purchase tables and chairs, computers, and teaching aids without an approval from the local educational authorities.

After the school made payment to the sellers’ accounts, Hue and Nhung worked with those traders to cancel the signed contracts and get back the paid amount.

The defendants confessed they had appropriated more than VND40 million ($1,920) that way.

However, the police said they are continuing their investigation to identify how much money Hue and Nhung actually appropriated from the school’s budget.

Vietnam holds airline counter-terrorism drill

Vietnamese Civil Aviation Administration on Friday held an airline counter-terrorism drill in Phu Bai airport in the central city of Hue to practice developing quick response to and thwarting terrorist attacks on civilian airliners and airport installations.

According to the set-up of the drill, a terrorist group belonging to a ‘hostile force in exile,’ armed with home-made guns and grenades, attacked security guards in the Phu Bai airport, killed four airline staff and some passengers, and held a number of them hostages. They then took control of the Airbus 320 and intended to fly the airplane abroad to escape after demanding and receiving a US$1 million ransom.

More than 500 armed troops were instantly mobilized from the provincial special force and the airline’s security force to block the scene and approach the target.

Dozens of armored vehicles, ambulances, and fire trucks were in readiness for rescue efforts.

After one hour of intense negotiation with the group, the special force opened fires and arrested 6 terrorists before rescuing 6 hostages.

Two substandard drugs suspended

Central Binh Dinh Province's Health Department has decided to suspend two drugs for failing to meet solubility standards.

Diclofenac sodium tablets (50mg), were produced by the Quang Binh Pharmaceutical Joint Stock Company, and Cefpodoxime Proxetil capsules (200mg) imported from India by Sai Gon Pharmaceutical Co Ltd.

Diclofenac is an anti-inflammatory drug and Cefpodoxime Proxetil is an antibiotic.

Minority children saved from labor abuse

The Ho Chi Minh City police have saved 23 ethnic minority children who had been employed illegally at two unlicensed sewing factories.

The children, 12-16 years old, are of the Kh’Mu ethnic minority in the northern mountainous province of Dien Bien, the police said.

Thursday afternoon, Jetstar Pacific Airlines Joint Stock Aviation Company offered these children a free flight to Hanoi, where they would take a bus to Dien Bien, Dan Tri Newswire reported.

Earlier, the HCMC criminal police department received a request from its Dien Bien counterpart to search for a number of children who were employed illegally in HCMC’s Tan Phu District.

The Dien Bien police asked for help after they were reported by a child who had escaped from a sewing factory in Tan Phu and returned home in Dien Bien’s Tuan Giao District.

After investigation, the HCMC police early this week raided an establishment owned by Le The Tuan, 35, in Tan Phu’s Tay Thanh Ward and found 3 Kh’Mu children working there.

The police later found another 9 teenagers at another sewing factory nearby owned by Le Hong Quang, 30, who is Tuan’s brother.

They then received 5 others from the Orphan Vocational Training Center, where the abused children had come for help after they fled from the two factories.

The two factories’ owners have confessed to the police a woman named Le Thi Duc had sent the children there to work.

Working without pay Duc, 68, from Bac Ninh Province, who lives as a temporary resident in Tan Phu, told the police that she “recruited” the child workers from some communes in Tuan Giao, VnExpress Newswire reported.

In the first two years of work, these children would be not paid. From the third year onward, they would receive VND500,000 (US$24) per month, Duc said, adding that she had written agreements about these terms that had the signatures of the parents of 14 out of the 23 children.

She said before taking the children to HCMC, she had paid VND1-3.5 million in advance as part of the children’s salaries to their parents.

For their parts, the children said they had been forced to work 14 hours per day without labor contracts and banned from going out of the factories.

They said they were not provided enough food daily and were beaten whenever they made mistakes at work.

In addition to the 23 children, some other children had also worked at the factories, but they had escaped, the police said.

The police said they were considering punishments on Duc for violating the Labor Code and on Tuan and Quang for operating businesses without a license and employing child labor.

Elevator death: residents demand better service

Ever since 56-year-old Nguyen Van Hoa died in an elevator accident in Hanoi’s Cau Giay District, residents have been greatly concerned about the elevators at CT 3 apartment in Tuy Hoa ward.

The two elevators stop working whenever there is a power outage since there is neither a generator nor an electrical storage device to bring passengers to the nearest floor.

Constrexim Real Asset Management One Member Company Limited, which manages the building, did show newswire Vietnamnet a maintenance contract his company had signed with Sao Do elevator company.

The document showed that the elevator from which Hoa climbed out and fell to his death during a power outage had been serviced on September 9, less than two weeks before the accident.

A few days after his death on the 21st the other elevator stopped working, and it is not clear why.

Nguyen Minh Hiep, director of Constrexim, said since CT3 is located in a new residential area with plenty of ongoing construction, spikes in electricity demand occasionally caused power disruption.

Though CT apartment has a generator, it takes some time to start, he said. On the day of the accident technicians had been trying to start the generator when Hoa climbed out of the elevator and fell, he said.

But CT3 residents decided enough was enough and besieged the Constrexim office last Wednesday, demanding better elevators and other amenities.

Le Quang Anh said he had been climbing to his house on the 12th floor despite having rheumatism.

T.T.M, who lives on the seventh floor, said his wife is 39 weeks pregnant but has to climb up and down several times a day.

“I don’t know what to do if my wife goes into labor and the elevator breaks down,” he said.
Another resident, N.N.C, said she had been stuck in the elevator four times and had to call other people and security guards to help her get out.

“There was one time when my two kids and I were stuck in the elevator.”

Security guards at Constrexim stopped the protestors and reporters. Only when local police officers arrived could residents meet an official to file their complaints. But reporters were kept out.

Pham Thu Hien, who lives on the 12th floor, said the residents also demanded improvements to the drainage system, construction of a meeting room and playground, and that they be allowed to monitor work.

“They merely promised to inform us about solutions within 10 days,” she said.

Rotten meat among Chinese foods seized

Rotten meat was among 200 cartons of Chinese foods that market management authorities in the central province of Quang Ngai seized Thursday for lacking documents.

The goods were in a truck they stopped in local Go Quang market following a tip-off from the public.

They found 35 kg of rotten chicken legs and 50 kg of unpacked chicken, monkey, weasel, and fox meat that had become rotten and stinky.

They also found 1,058 bottles of beer, 912 bottles of soft drinks, 144 bottles of liquor, 195 bottles of fresh milk, 150 bottles of soy sauce, 180 bottles of various spices, and 12 bottles of cooking oil, all with Chinese brand names, and 17 tons of potatoes, three cartons of chilies.

The truck driver, Le Dai Thang of the northern Quang Tri Province, said he had been hired to take the goods from Bac Ninh Province near Hanoi to some traders in Ho Chi Minh City.

He admitted all the goods were from China but had no documents for them.

The officials have seized the entire consignment for investigation.

VNN/VNS/Tuoi Tre