HCM City says motorbike racing ‘terrifying'

The HCM City People's Council discussed measures to prevent illegal motorbike street racing at a meeting yesterday, March 1, including several recommended in three reports by the People's Committee.

The reports suggest harsher penalties for eight dangerous stunts by street racers that terrify the public.

They include riding without hands or with their feet, sitting on one side or lying on motorbikes, switching riders while travelling at speed, zigzagging, and doing wheelies.

The committee has sought the council's approval for sending a petition to the National Assembly's Standing Committee and the Government for slapping harsher punishments on a trial basis.

These include seizing motorbikes even if it is a racer's first offence, and a daily fine of VND500,000 for a motorbike seized by the police until its release.

The report also recommends measures to reduce the number of private vehicles, such as increasing fees (for registration and number plate) and collecting toll from them for entering the downtown area.

They are also more vulnerable to unemployment due to low education levels and working skills, it says.

Female workers account for 50.3 per cent of the workforce in the city where more than 3.5 million labourers are employed, says the report released on Wednesday by the city's Centre for Labour Market Information and Human Resource Forecasting.

More than 70 per cent of labourers in the textile and garment, footwear and agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors are female, while most of the workers in transport, construction, telecommunications and information technology sectors are male.

Tran Anh Tuan, deputy director of the centre, said that developing sectors such as food processing, paper packing, electronics, plastics, textiles and garment would attract more female workers in the coming years.

Agriculture, fisheries and food processing, pottery, tourism, hospitality, entertainment and other service industries would attract around 60 per cent of female workers in the 2012-2015 period, Tuan said.

The city has created more than 1.3 million jobs over the past five years, and women accounted for more than 55 per cent of these, he said.

Vietnam arrests man for selling sex toys

Police have arrested a 25-year-old man in Ho Chi Minh City for allegedly trading in Viagra, Cialis and sex toys without papers.

Tran Hoang Quan was nabbed after police confiscated 150 boxes of Cialis, 2,274 boxes of Viagra pills and 13 boxes of Viagra (liquid form) and 22 dildos which were found in his house in District 6.

Police also found medicines and aphrodisiacs without origins at another locations managed by Quan in District 1.

Quan does not have any medial diploma and does not have license to trade in such products, police say.

He told police he earned VND7-9 million per month from such trading activities.

Since the seized medicines do not have clear origins nor legal certificates, Quan is facing charges of “trading in fake medicinal products”.

Foreigners scam local man

A man reported a theft on Tuesday to Ha Noi's Cau Giay District Police, allegedly involving two foreigners.

Vu Van Thuan from the northern city of Hai Phong told police that after helping two foreigners to identify the denomination of different notes, he found he had lost VND5 million (US$240) from his wallet.

Thuan said the foreigners had pulled over in a car and asked him to explain the difference between the notes. Thuan showed them his own wallet in an attempt to explain, but one of them dropped a note and urged him to bend down to pick it up. They returned his wallet to him and drove away, but Thuan later found the money was missing.

Da Nang’s policies violate law: justice agency

Many items in a resolution on social and economic development goals for 2012 issued by Da Nang city People’s Council are unlawful or exceed their authorities, Le Hong Son, head of the Justice Ministry’s Legal Document Examination Department, said.

The department has held a meeting to examine the resolution, with the attendance of many officials from the National Assembly’s Law Committee, the Government Office’s Law Bureau, the Ministry of Public and some other relevant agencies.

Son said he has reported to Justice Minister Ha Hung Cuong the results of the examination after the meeting.

The resolution, which was issued on December 24, 2011, contains an article that states that “the city authorities temporarily halt receiving applications for registration of permanent residence by individuals who rent, borrow or are offered accommodation in the city if they are unemployed or have record of previous convictions or offenses.”

Son and many attendants at the meeting pointed out that this policy violates the Law on Residence and the decree that provides instructions for implementation of the law.

Under the law, citizens who have a legal domicile, whether it is rented, borrowed or offered to them without rent, are eligible for registration of permanent residence at that domicile, and the registration must be handled within 15 days of receipt of application, Son said.

Dang Dinh Luyen, deputy chairman of the NA’s Law Committee, said the committee will hold another meeting to review the issue before reporting to the NA’s Standing Committee.

The resolution also contained some policies that Son and other law officials considered to be beyond the city’s jurisdiction.

Under the resolution, the city will stop licensing new pawning business – a policy that Son and other officials said belongs to the authority of the Government and the NA’s Standing Committee, not the city authorities, according to the Ordinance on Handling Administrative Violations.

The resolution also adopted a regulation that allows the police to impose a heavy fine on underage students who ride motorbikes and impounds their vehicles for 60 days.

Such a regulation is both beyond the city’s authority and contradicts the Government’s regulation on detention of vehicles, the department said.

The city’s Justice Department admitted that the regulation was against the law and has reported to the city’s People’s Council about this.

Talking with Tuoi Tre, Son said he has asked the city People’s Council to review and handle the above-mentioned unlawful contents in the resolution.

Increase in ‘contract’ prostitution

Well organized rings have begun offering contract prostitution, recruiting educated, attractive girls to work under contract, technically as secretaries or assistants, for entrepreneurs, an official of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs (MoLISA) has said.

These short-term contracts, de facto prostitution agreements, legalize both domestic and overseas business trips by the girls and their clients, said Le Duc Hien, Vice Head of the Department of Social Evil Prevention under the MoLISA.

Many female attendants have been also lured to border areas between Vietnam and China, as well as Cambodia, to meet the increasing demand for prostitution there, Hien said at a press briefing in Hanoi on March 1.

Given this, the Vietnamese government has allocated VND25 billion for 41 provinces to fight this social evil in 2012. The money is part of a VND600 billion package for the anti-prostitution program between 2011 and 2015.

In the struggle against prostitution, emphasis will be put on education and public awareness to change behaviours and lifestyles in each individual and family, with the aim of building a strong consensus in society, said Nguyen Van Minh, head of the Department for Social Evil Prevention.

According to statistics by the department, over 73,000 establishments provide ‘sensitive’ services involving more than 48,000 female employees nationwide. Of the total, nearly 3,000 establishments with over 3,200 female staff are suspected of providing prostitution services. Prostitution has reached many rural, remote, or mountainous areas.

Many prostitution rings run sophisticated operations, taking advantage of high-tech utilities such as internet, websites, and forums. There are hundreds of online sites introducing prostitutes. A number of models, singers, actresses, and students have been found to be involved in prostitution.

Regarding drug abuse, Minh said that in 2012, Vietnam will shift its focus from building large-scale, provincial level detoxification centres for drug addicts to developing a system of community-based average-scale centres to increase addicts’ access to treatment services.

Organizations, businesses, and individuals will be mobilized in efforts to provide jobs for reformed drug users, Minh added. The country will also strive to increase the rate of addicts voluntarily engaging in drug detoxification.

Some specific targets for 2012 include receiving 35,000 drug addicts for detoxification, managing 20,000 people who have undergone detoxification, providing jobs for them, and slashing by 30 percent the number of communes and wards heavily affected by prostitution.

Japanese organisations bring safe water to Hoa Binh local people

Seed To Table (STT), a non-profit organisation in collaboration with LIXIL Corporation, both from Japan, has conducted a public campaign to bring safe water to people in Phu Vinh commune, Tan Lac district, in the northern mountainous province of Hoa Binh.

The campaign aims to raise public awareness of the need to protect water resources and use simple water filters. 

LIXIL, which specialises in building materials and housing equipment, will coordinate with STT to help pupils learn about the environment and local natural resources. 

According to Chiemi Kumazaki, LIXIL Group Representative, people can use homemade sand, gravel and coal filters to treat water and reduce bacteria.

Central Highlands Steering Committee sets tasks for 2012

A conference was held on March 1 by the Central Highlands Steering Committee to implement its work programme for 2012, with the attendance of politburo member and Minister of Pubic Security Tran Dai Quang.  

In his speech, Public Security Minister Quang said that the committee has devised 12 key tasks that need to be focuses of its work programme for this year.

These major tasks include building particular mechanisms and policies for investment attraction to boost socio-economic development in the Central Highlands provinces, assessing the real situation of rural infrastructure, land use, and the lives of ethnic minority people and migrants, and considering proposals that need to be dealt with.

These important issues pertain to the stability and sustainable development of the Central Highlands provinces and surrounding mountainous districts, Quang emphasized.

At the conference, representatives from relevant ministries and sectors and the Central Highlands provinces discussed ways of carrying out the 12 tasks in the 2012 work programme and proposed mechanisms for closer coordination between the Central Highlands Steering Committee and central ministries, sectors and localities to provide fresh impetus for speeding up socio-economic development and ensuring stability in the region.

VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre