Garment workers treated for food poisoning

One hour after having lunch at their company yesterday, June 27, 166 workers from Quang Thai Garment Co. Ltd. in Binh Tan District, Ho Chi Minh City were hospitalized for treatment of food poisoning.

At 12:30 pm, Quoc Anh Private Hospital and Binh Tan District Hospital received the workers who had developed food poisoning symptoms like stomachache, vomiting, fatigue, skin rash, and numbness of limps.
Of the patients at Quoc Anh, 2 fell into a coma after hospitalization, said Dr. Nguyen Thi Kim Thuy, head of the hospital’s General Planning Department.
Earlier, the workers had cooked rice with various options such as sautéed pork rib, fried tuna fish, fried chicken, soya-cakes, fish cake sautéed with tomato, fried kohlrabi, and cabbage soup.
Workers’ meals at Quang Thai have been provided by Anh Thu, an eatery in Binh Hung Hoa Ward that was not licensed to provide industrial food rations, said the HCMC Sub-Department of Food Safety and Hygiene.
The Inspectorate of the HCMC Health Department yesterday suspended the food provider and took samples of the food there for testing.
By 18 pm yesterday, 79 patients had been discharged from the two hospitals, according to the sub-department.
Last Saturday, a similar food poisoning case occurred at South Korean-owned Kido Hanoi Co., Ltd. in the northern province of Hung Yen, affecting about 120 workers, who were taken to three local hospitals for treatment.
The testing of the food samples taken from this company showed that the food was contaminated with harmful microorganism, said the Hung Yen Sub-Department of Food Safety and Hygiene.

9-day-old boy abandoned to nun on bus

A 9-day-old boy was left to a nun on a bus in Can Tho City last Saturday who took him back to Long An Pagoda in Phuong Thanh Ward.

Dieu Minh was on bus traveling from Kien Giang Province to Can Tho when a woman got into the bus and asked her to keep the boy for a moment as she needed to get off to go to the restroom.
The woman never got on the bus again.
Examining the bag left on the bus by the woman, the nun found old pieces of clothes and a sheet of paper that read, “the boy was born on June 19, 2011. It weighs over 3 kg and has not yet been named.”

The nun then took the abandoned baby to her pagoda.
The newborn boy is the fifth one to be left under the pagoda’s care for the past three months, the nun said.

Ha Noi to apply new fees for vehicle parking

The Hanoi Tax Department has proposed new fees for vehicle parking services to correspond with the current economic situation and tackle overcharging in carparks around the city.

The maximum charges for motorbike parking in central Ha Noi and in high-grade apartment buildings will be VND3000 (14.6 cents) per vehicle during the day and VND5000 at night time. The rates for bicycles will be VND2000 and VND3000, respectively.

The fee for cars has been proposed at VND20,000 in the city's central districts and VND10,000 in suburban districts and towns. Parking times will also be reduced to stop members of the public leaving their vehicles for too long.

In June, the city's police inspected 42 vehicle parking places around the city and found massive violations. Many places apply fee rates two to three times higher than the rates currently regulated by the city authority.-

Dak Lak cops indicted for deadly torture

Four officers at Dak Trung Prisoner in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak have been charged with using corporal punishment on a prisoner which led to his death.
The prosecution was announced yesterday by the Supreme People’s Procuracy after it had confirmed that 28 year-old Truong Thanh Tuan died after being brutalized by the officers.
The indicted are Sergeant Major Hoang Dinh Nam, 24, Sub-lieutenant Nguyen Van Tho, 26, and two Private First Class soldiers, Le Huu Thiet, 20, and Tran Van Phuoc, also 20.
According to the charge, the men used plastic batons to beat Tuan to death on September 23, 2010.
After the beating, Tuan was taken to the hospital but died on the way.
The officers said they beat Tuan as he showed attitudes that were offensive and insulting to them.
Tuan, who comes from Nam Long Town, Lam Ha District, Lam Dong Province, had been serving his 24-year sentence at the prison.

Volunteers to walk across Vietnam for charity

Over 1,000 people are expected to take part in a charity walk from Vinh City in the central province of Nghe An to Ho Chi Minh City.

Participants from all over the country will set off on July 2 on the 1,560km journey through 16 cities and provinces, before arriving in HCM City on August 12.

At each destination, walkers will take part in charitable activities, such as presenting gifts to victims of Agent Orange, financing scholarships for poor kids and instructing residents how to use computers and surf the internet.

A variety of environmental protection activities will also take place during their trip, including planting trees and picking up rubbish along the coast.

Well-known models and artists will act as ambassadors for the event, which is being held for the fourth time.

It aims to help the poor, protect the environment and connect people. Le Thanh Nam, chairman of the organising committee, said: "This year, the event will continue to help poor kids, disabled people, orphans and Agent Orange victims."

Songs for AO victims awarded

Twenty-one songs about Agent Orange victims selected from 172 entries were awarded in a ceremony at the Cultural Friendship Palace in Hanoi recently.

Composer Khanh Vinh from Ho Chi Minh City won the first prize with his song entitled ‘Loi Ru’ (Lullaby).
The contest, launched in October 2010 in response to the 50th anniversary of the use of AO in Vietnam (August 10, 1961 - 2011), was jointly held by the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/dioxin (VAVA), the ASEAN Communications Joint Stock Company and the Vietnam Musicians’ Association.
At the award ceremony, the national humanitarian portal 1400 announced that it received 351,238 SMS in support for the “Joining hands in easing AO pains” programme between February 22 and June 19, raising more than VND6.3 billion.
With the money, the VAVA Central Committee will build 55 communal-level day care centres for AO victims and 550 charitable houses, grant more than 1,000 scholarships to and find jobs for children of AO victims.

Police release whistleblower’s attackers for lack of evidence

Binh Duong Province’s Di An Town Police said they had released the six alleged thieves who later might have made a bloody revenge on their whistleblower because they didn’t have enough evidence.

In an interview yesterday with Tuoi Tre, Lieutenant Colonel Tran Nhat Hieu, deputy head of the Di An Town Police, said the ward police inspected these men’s rent house in Hamlet 3 on June 25 and found dozens of motorbike license plates and ID cards as well as a picklock tool.

During the investigation at the police station later, these men said they had been renting the house for 4 months and had nothing to do with those license plates which had been left on their rooftop by somebody, Hieu said.

Hieu said the police thus had to set the men free as they hadn’t caught them red handed.

In response to Tuoi Tre’s question why the police could be easily persuaded even though several whistleblowers had said these were professional thieves, Hieu said these whistleblowers couldn’t prove their charge either.

He said these men were still staying at their house under the police’s monitoring.

Hieu said the police are now investigating to prosecute the men after they found out one of the license plates belonged to a resident of Dong Nai Province. The police have also been informed of the attack on Nguyen Tang Tien and are verifying if the released men had anything to do with it.

Regarding the rumor that the men were set free immediately because they are members of the Tuan “cho” (Tuan “dog”) gang which is under the police’s protection, Hieu simply said that local police would never compromise with criminals.

Man driving van into workers charged with murder

The chief security guard at a Hanoi-based Taiwanese company has been charged with murder - not traffic violations as has previously been pressed - after he drove a truck into a crowd of workers on strike, killing one on Thursday.

On the morning of June 23, the workers at Special Material Co., Ltd. Vietnam went on strike, demanding better pay.

They blocked a van from entering.

Le Tuan Minh got angry and told the driver to get off while he himself got onto the vehicle and drove it straight into the obstructing crowd.

Minh does not have a driving license.

The van killed one and injured six other workers.
All of the victims were taken to Chuong My Hospital, but one of them, Nguyen Thi Lieu, whose neck was run over, died on the way.
He should have known that his act would cause danger, even death, but still committed it, police said.
Minh’s act thus constituted a murder.
Minh, 36, from the district’s Ngoc Hoa Commune, is a staff member of the Northern Security Joint Stock Company.
He had been assigned to work as chief security guard at Just Special Material Co., Ltd. Vietnam for 2 months.

Vengeful thieves freed, attack whistleblower

The four thieves who were set free immediately after arrest returned this morning to exact revenge on a whistle-blowing motorbike taxi (xe om) driver who tipped off their whereabouts to police in Binh Duong province.

In hospital, Nguyen Tang Tien told Tuoi Tre that the four suddenly broke in and ruthlessly slashed him with scimitars when he was in the kitchen with his wife at 5am.

He affirmed that these were the thieves previously arrested by Di An’s police thanks to his and his fellows’ tip-off.

Tien had to undergo a surgery.

Doctors said he was severely injured with deep cuts in his both hands and right thigh.

But Tien is not alone in his crime-fighting quest. He and some other xe om drivers have loosely formed a band nicknamed “crime fighters” to help police bust criminals and to catch thieves themselves.

Thanks to this group’s tip-off, on June 25, the police inspected the house in Hamlet 3 of An Binh Ward, Di An Town where the gang was renting and caught six men with dozens of motorbike license plates and ID cards.

Tien said the police seized the men and took them all to the station.

“But we were stunned to see those men come back with scimitars to seek vengeance upon us the following morning,” Tien told Tuoi Tre before the attack.

“If things like this continue to happen, I’m afraid we cannot continue our fight against the crime.” Luong Duc Tuy, head of Hamlet 3, said the criminals were released only an hour after they were detained.

Nguyen Ninh Phuong, a local who claimed to witness the arrest, said he could not believe his eyes seeing the thieves come back with weapons to seek out the drivers.

“We have demanded the police to protect those helping them drive off crimes,” he said.

Luong Duc Tuy said the local taxi motorbike drivers had discovered and cracked dozens of crimes in the past years.

“They refuse to quit despite a number of death threats from the criminals.”

US$1.2 billion int’l aid for climate change fight

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has raised more than US$1.2 billion from the international community for efforts to cope with climate change.

The ministry said the funding is scheduled to focus on a national programme on adaptation to and mitigation of the impact of climate change and a programme on water resources management and addressing climate change and rising sea tides in Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta as a whole.
Cooperation in human resources development, research and production for the water industry and reduction in greenhouse gas emission through deforestation and forest degradation control, sustainable forestry and forest carbon storage are other priorities for the use of the fund, said the ministry.
Local administrations have so far proposed 552 projects with a total cost of US$3.6 billion for the fight against climate change.

VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre