Labour relations in garment, footwear enterprises discussed

A seminar opened in Hanoi on August 25 to discuss ways to promote sound labour relations for better competitiveness of Vietnamese garment and footwear businesses.

The event was co-organised by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO).
During the event, delegates shared measures to build sound labour relations in the workplace, such as holding positive dialogue among employers, employees and relevant sides like trade unions and company partners, as well as establishing a dialogue process to ensure its reliability and transparency.
Vu Huu Tuyen, Deputy Director of a project funded the United States Agency for International Development on supporting implementation of labour laws and promotion of sound industrial relations in Vietnam, said that employers need to view labour relations and human resources management from a strategic, instead of traditional angle.
Patrick Gilabert, Chief Representative of UNIDO in Vietnam, said that businesses should raise awareness of their social responsibilities through environmentally friendly production, improvement in labour practices and raising global competitiveness. 

The participants agreed that in order to ensure sound labour relations, both businesses and employees must abide by labour laws. 

Businesses need to ensure favourable working conditions, build strong trade unions, fully implement labour policy, build a progressive, collective labour agreement and hold regular dialogue between business and employees.

Toyota transfers whistle-blower to inferior job

Engineer Le Van Tach. (Photo: Giao Duc Viet Nam)

TMV reiterated that a disciplinary action against Tach was an internal affair of the company that was aimed at stabilizing the company’s labor relations and was not related to Tach’s disclosure of Toyota’s technical faults to the mass media.

In last April Tach released documents revealing three major glitches in Innova and Fortuner vehicles.

The cars made in Vietnam faced balance issues since their screws were not tightened properly as instructed by the Japanese company, Tach said.

The brakes and seats did not meet safety standards either, he added.

His exposure led to the biggest vehicle recall in Vietnamese history.

21-year-old woman gives birth to quadruplets

L.T.V.T., a 21-year-old woman hailing from An Giang Province Wednesday successfully gave birth to four babies weighing six kilos in total at Ho Chi Minh City’s Gia Dinh People Hospital yesterday, Aug 25.

T. was 32 weeks pregnant when she broke into labor and was hospitalized Wednesday morning. With the help of the doctors, T. successfully gave birth to four babies, weighing from 1.1 kilos to 1.75 kilos.

As the babies were born prematurely, they are under special watch at the hospital’s department of neonatology.

According to Doctor Nguyen Duc Vu, T. got married two years ago and wanted to have kids early. She went to a gynecologist and was given fertility pills.

Four months into her pregnancy, T. was diagnosed with three babies. At month six, T. found out she was going to have quadruplets.

Some inside sources say T comes from a poor family.

Vietnam-Japan labour cooperation focused on poor districts

Forty labourers from four Vietnamese provinces will be sent to Japan for refresher and technical training courses. 

Under a cooperation programme between the Vietnamese Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) and the International Manpower Development Organisation of Japan, each of the localities, including Ha Giang, Ninh thuan, Tuyen Quang and Binh Thuan, will make a list of 20 candidates to be selected for the programme. 

MoLISA has asked the northern border province of Ha Giang and the southcentral coastal province of Ninh thuan to give priority to poor districts in line with the Prime Minister’s decision on April 29, 2009 to help poor districts promote labour exports, reduce poverty and develop sustainably during the 2009-2020 period.

Eligible candidates must meet requirements on health, language skills and discipline.

13 injured after bus tumbles into sewer on highway

A bus yesterday, Aug 24, fell into a sewer on the national highway 1A after the driver lost his control, leaving 13 passengers injured.

The victims were taken to the province’s general hospital for emergency care. Four of them are reportedly in critical condition.

Meanwhile, the driver identified as 39-year-old Giap Trong Nhan just sustained slight wounds.

The incident, which took place at 7:00am at Van Hung Commune, Van Ninh District in the central coastal province of Khanh Hoa, also caused badly damage to the vehicle.

Japan appreciates Vietnam’s support for disaster victims

Japan highly values Vietnam’s support for victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, said a former Japanese senator.

A sentimental string has been formed to connect people of the two countries, former Japanese Senator Iwao Matsuda told a press briefing on the Vietnam Festival 2011 in Tokyo on August 24. He added that Japan has received a lot of messages and valuable aid from the Vietnamese people over the past five months.

The festival, to take place at Yoyogi park in Tokyo from September 17-18, is held annually by the Vietnamese Embassy in partnership with the Japanese side.

The first festival was organised in 2008 on the occasion of the 35^th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Japan and Vietnam.

Vietnamese Ambassador to Japan Nguyen Phu Binh said the organising board will devote one booth to sell products made in the areas seriously hit by the disasters such as Asahi city of Chiba province and Fukushima prefecture in northeastern Japan.

In furtherance of the festival, there will be a fund-raising campaign for Japanese disaster victims.

Da Nang dump trucks overload with impunity

Many transport and construction companies in Da Nang use a giant Chinese-made dump truck that allows them to carry double the maximum loads permitted in cities.

Dongfeng trucks can be spotted at most construction sites around the city, especially the urban complexes of Hoa Xuan and Quan Nam – Thuy Tu and the residential area near Xuan Phuoc Bridge, where hundreds of them are overloaded with sand and constantly travel to and fro.

Nguyen Huong, director of the local Registry, the government agency responsible for vehicle safety, said transport companies were increasingly using the Dongfeng.

Tran Quang H., a driver at a transport company, said 80 percent of his company’s vehicles were Dongfeng.

“None of the drivers in our company follow loading capacity regulations,” he admitted.
“The traffic police can never discover that you are overloaded if you cover the body carefully.”

The truck is only licensed to carry 25 tons while it can carry up to 49 tons.

It meant the vehicle could only be half filled but few drivers do so, he said.

Many roads and bridges around Da Nang have been badly damaged in recent times and the needle of suspicion points towards these giant trucks.

The bypass of the Hai Van Tunnel, for instance, has again developed cracks despite repairs just last April.

The Hoa Xuan Bridge, which has a load capacity of 20 tons and over which Dongfeng trucks pass thousands of times every day, is in bad shape.

Bui Chi Hoa, deputy head of the city traffic police, said three overloaded trucks passing over the bridge had been penalized severely.

But traffic police statistics show that only 53 trucks have been fined since March 23.

Male body found in Ho Chi Minh City canal

Ho Chi Minh City authorities are investigating the death of a middle-aged man whose body was found in Nhieu Loc canal on Thursday morning.

Local residents found the corpse floating under the bridge pier No. 6 situated on Le Van Sy Street in Phu Nhuan District’s Ward 13.

Initial investigations found the perished didn’t have any identity papers and red blood still dripped from his nose.

Police said three cell phones were found in his pants pocket.

Huge crowds rushed to the scene, causing severe road congestion.

The body has been sent for an autopsy examination.

Tien Phong journalist jailed 7 years for extortion

Ho Chi Minh City court Wednesday sentenced former deputy managing editor of the Tien Phong newspaper Phan Ha Binh to 7 years behind bars on criminal charges of extortion after he used reports to blackmail local enterprises.

The hearing was attended by dozens of reporters including some his colleagues.

Binh denied the defense attorney and confessed to all his crimes at the trial.

Binh admitted his illegal wrong-doings violated the journalism’s principles. He also conveyed his profound apologies to his victims and colleagues in the Tien Phong newspaper.

Indictments showed 41-year-old Phan Ha Binh, whose pen name was Ha Phan, used a news report about a failing project of the Saigon-Tan Ky Cement Joint Stock Company to blackmail the company.

Binh wrote and published an article about the project, which, according to Binh's first article, was a building site in Nghe An province that had been idle for about four months because the company could not find investors.

Police said Binh repeatedly demanded money from the company or he would write more stories about it. Under Vietnamese law, a company's investment license can be revoked if a project does not show enough progress.

Last October a company representative gave him VND220 million (US$10,700) at a restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, but the police had been informed about the transaction and arrested him there.

Another business also accused him of blackmailing the company to “pocket” US$1,000.

Tien Phong regularly runs investigative stories and is one of the country's best-selling newspapers.

HCMC airport employee steals passenger’s money

An employee in Ho Chi Minh City-based Tan Son Nhat International Airport has been caught-red handed stealing money from a passenger’s luggage, Vietnam news agency reported.

Dao Van Cuong, an airline employee in charge of luggage, was caught stealing money from a suitcase that a passenger consigned to the airport on August 23’s morning.

Cuong told police he found the luggage unlocked and grew greedy. He stole it and hid it inside a fire box.

He has been arrested.

Three HCM City firms neglect waste rules

During unannounced inspections yesterday, Aug 24, the Ho Chi Minh City environmental police caught three companies in District 9 violating waste treatment regulations.

The Southern Chemical Industry One-Member Co Ltd installed a pump to transmit untreated wastewater from the company through a plastic pipeline to the sewerage of the residential area.

At Phan Sinh Super Electro Plating Co Ltd, the police found the company did not operate its waste treatment system but directly released untreated wastewater into the drain system of the residential area.

The company did not use its exhaust treatment system, either.

Similarly, the police caught Huong Viet Factory of the Chemicals and Microorganism Joint Stock Company discharging 15 cubic meters of wastewater without treatment into the environment.

The company was also found unsafely storing a number of harmful waste products.

The police took samples of the wastewater and sludge in the three companies for testing.

Similarly, on August 15, the police also found three companies in Cu Chi District infringing the regulations on waste treatment.

The violators are Lien Hiep Rubber One-Member Production and Trading Co Ltd, Thai Hung Thinh Production and Trading Co Ltd, and PTH Production Trading and Service Co Ltd.

Vietnam, US share ideas on water resources

40 Vietnamese experts joined their US colleagues in sharing experiences in coping with climate change and water resource management in Vietnam ’s Red River basin and the US Mississippi River.

At a workshop held in Hanoi on Thursday, Vietnamese water resource expert Nguyen Ty Nien said Vietnam is facing a prolonged water shortage in many rivers and streams in the dry season and more than 60 percent of Vietnam’s water sources came from other countries.

He also pointed out serious water pollution at many river basins and degrading water resources due to economic growth over recent decades.

Climate change has resulted in different rainfall patterns and caused serious flooding in the rainy season and droughts in the dry season, contributing to increasing challenges in the utilisation of water in major rivers like the Red and Mekong Rivers, the workshop was told.

Participants said that it is useful and necessary to share experiences and lessons on climate change with the US and international community, and to encourage the local community’s involvement in river basin management.

Director of Flood Management Policy at American Rivers Shana Udvardy said that the future water of resources has become unstable and human adaptation to climate change depends on human choices.

Prosecutors give police more time to probe murder

The Long An Province People’s Procuracy has given the police another 30 days to wrap up investigation in the case in which Tran Thuy Lieu allegedly burned her husband, a journalist, to death last January.

Cao Minh Tri, the chief of the prosecutor’s office, said his agency could not yet approve the indictment of Lieu, 40, for murder due to the complicated nature of the case.

The lawyer representing Nguyen Thi Kim Nga, the mother of the victim Le Hoang Hung, had raised certain questions and the police needed more time to find answers, he said.

On July 28 the police filed murder charges against Lieu for burning her husband to death. They concluded she acted alone, rejecting speculation that someone had assisted her in the murder. She had confessed to the killing in February.

There was speculation that Lieu’s lover Nguyen Van Tam, former head of the province’s Market Management Team No. 5, had a hand in the murder but the police said there was no evidence for it.

They sent the indictment to the procuracy for approval, but lawyer Nguyen Van Duc wanted the agency to refer the case file back to the police for reinvestigation since a number of issues remained unclear.

One of them was that the evidence collected at the crime scene did not dovetail with Lieu’s confession. Lieu claimed to have bought a 12-meter rope and tied it to the balcony railing to create a red herring, but the rope was in fact only 10.5 meters long.

Another was that the motive for the murder was unclear since according to Lieu’s relatives, the couple had had no serious conflicts.

The quantity of gasoline she allegedly used to burn Hung was not the same as in her confession.

Importantly, an examination of the crime found that the mattress on which Hung had been lying burst into flames from two sources of fire at the same time but the investigators agreed with Lieu’s confession that she had acted alone.

If the issues were not explained clearly, the police could leave out someone who had actually been involved in the murder, the lawyer said.

At midnight January 19, when Hung was sleeping alone in a bedroom, Lieu went out to the balcony, tied a rope to the railing, and let it fall to the ground.

She then returned to her room, got some petrol, a newspaper, and a lighter, walked into Hung’s room, poured the petrol on the mattress, set fire to the newspaper, and threw it on the mattress.

Hung had been a journalist for Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper covering social, underworld, and anti-corruption issues.

Fatherland Front pitches in to ‘slush fund’ case

The Vietnam Fatherland Front has urged the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuracy to treat the case against a former head of the Song Hau Farm for “setting up an illegal fund” as an administrative lapse rather than a crime.

It sent an Official Letter signed by deputy chairman and general secretary of its central committee, Vu Trong Kim, for the purpose.

Suong had been sentenced to eight years in prison in 2008 for running a “slush fund” at the farm worth VND10.1 billion (US$483,000).

The 62-year-old was also ordered to pay VND4.3 billion in restitution to the government, with the Can Tho City People’s Court finding her guilty of ordering her employees to misuse the off-the-books fund during her tenure as director from 2001 to 2007.

She appealed saying the fund was actually a welfare fund for the collective, used to help members in financial need.

But it was rejected by the appeal court in November 2009 and Suong then appealed to the Supreme People’s Court.

The Vietnam Fatherland Front said the allegation that Suong set up the fund was groundless since it had existed even in 1994, six years before Suong became director of the farm.

It also said that it was the farm’s Trade Union that managed the fund which was anyway not created from the state budget.

“There are no regulations banning such a fund from being set up,” the VFF said.

Moreover, the case was complicated since a number of relevant issues had yet to be clarified, it said.

The VFF said it had considered all relevant laws and the great contributions made by Suong and her family to the Song Hau Farm, which was once considered a successful model for the country's agricultural development.

Suong herself won the Asia Pacific Impressive Women Award in 2002 and Vietnam’s Labour Hero award in 1999.

Vietnamese man orders Rolls Royce with dragon

A Vietnamese national living in the US has ordered a Rolls Royce Phantom with a hand-painted dragon in gold on the side of the car, a source told VnExpress newswire.

He decided to buy it soon after the British automaker announced a special edition range of Phantom sedans called the “Year of the Dragon Collection.”

Rolls-Royce’s Bespoke Division, inspired by the mythical creature that is revered in China, developed the collection to target the large number of customized orders from China.

More dragons are found inside the car, including a dragon inlay on the passenger panel.
The company has yet to fix the price for the limited edition car.

VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre