Company director on tax fraud counts

The director of four companies, Nguyen Thi Duyen, 48, of Bac Ninh City, has been arrested on charges of illegally selling value-added-tax (VAT) invoices to other local companies for profit, Bac Ninh provincial police said yesterday.

Duyen is accused of establishing limited companies from 2008 to July this year and buying 50 volumes of VAT invoices covering more than VND200 billion (US$9.7 million).

Her companies are said to have little business activity - apart from selling the invoices. The companies are the Tien Bao, Manh Cuong Quoc, Phu Thuan Thanh and Van Giang limited companies and are located in the northern provinces of Bac Ninh and Bac Giang.

It is alleged the invoices were illegally filled with data from buyers and that Duyen received a percentage of the money saved.

This caused the State to lose tens billion of dong in tax, according to local police.

Earlier, local police said they had caught Nguyen Thi Bien, 36, an accountant for the four companies and an accomplice of Duyen, red-handed.

They were alleged to have been selling VAT invoices at her office in Tien An Trade Centre in the city on August 16.

Local police are still investigating.

Village resents building restrictions

Building restrictions imposed to protect the ancient village complex of Duong Lam in Son Tay, about 50km from Hanoi, is said to be making it difficult for some residents.

Others complain that they receive no financial gain from living in the past.

The village complex consists of a group of five traditional northern villages with solid, low-slung houses, temples, pagodas and communal houses and walls made of laterite, a type of natural mud brick.

In 2005, the area was recognized as a national historical and cultural relic, and one year later, Son Tay Town People’s Committee passed regulations to preserve it.

Vice Head of the Duong Lam ancient village management board, Nguyen Trong An, said the preservation area covered about 150 hectares. Picturesque leftovers from the past include old village gates, ancient houses, and cultural values presented in traditional festivals and even the lifestyles.

The heart of the preservation area is Mong Phu Village, Mong Phu village gate, a temple built in 1684 and many ancient houses aged 300-400 years old.

An said that the regulations now insisted that most new buildings in Mong Phu Village must be built in the old style, no more than one storey in height, with a height of less than three metres and tiled sloping roof.

In the neighbouring preserved villages of Dong Sang, Doai Giao, Cam Thinh and Cam Lam, two-storey houses with tiled sloping roofs are acceptable as long as their designs are approved by local authorities.

However, a Mong Phu villager, Ha Thi Khanh, said that her old-style one-storey house was too small for her family of eight, so with savings and loans of about VND800 million (US$38,000), she built a two-storey house. She paid the price for flaunting the regulations. Her newly-built house was torn down by local authorities last December.

An, from the ancient village management board, said that housing demands of the 6,000 local residents of the complex of villages controlled by preservation rules was on the rise. He added that many of the homes were dilapidated.

Since 2008, about 100 households have applied to build, extend or fix their houses, but few received licenses.

Minister promises job to Toyota whistle-blower

Engineer Le Van Tach. (Photo: GDVN)

In April Tach had revealed three major glitches in Toyota’s Innova and Fortuner cars which led to the biggest ever vehicle recall in Vietnam.

In June the company suspended him for three months with half pay and in August transferred him to another job as a safety controller for finished cars at a salary of VND9.873 million (US$474) per month, VND2.6 million lower than his previous income.

Last month he filed in the Phuc Yen town people’s court complaining that his demotion was unlawful.

Three people charged with trafficking and selling 22kg of heroin were sentenced to death and four others sentenced to life imprisonment, announced northern Lao Cai Province's People's Court on Wednesday.

The case, which included 11 defendants, also saw four other people receive jail terms ranging from eight to 20 years. All 11 defendants were fined between VND15 million (US$700) to VND50 million ($2,400)

According to police, the drug trafficking ring had been transporting heroin from Laos to northern Dien Bien and Lao Cai provinces since 2006. The traffickers admitted receiving VND7 billion (US$340,000) for the drugs through the post and via bank transfers.

This was the biggest ever drug trafficking bust in the province.

The 11 were arrested in July last year and charged in May this year.

Japan grants over $105,500 for bridge

Japan had granted Viet Nam over $105,500 to build a suspension bridge crossing the Son River in central Quang Binh Province's Son Trach Commune, announced the Japanese Embassy in Viet Nam.

The grant agreement was signed yesterday between Japanese Ambassador Yasuaki Tanizaki and the commune People's Committee chairman, Nguyen Cong Tru.

The bridge is expected to ease travel woes, especially for students who have to travel to school by boat in the rainy season.

More Vietnamese workers recruited overseas

A total of 7,001 people were sent abroad to work in September this year, according to the Overseas Labour Management Department.

Of the figure, 3,559 people are working in Taiwan, 824 in Malaysia, 751 in Japan, 430 in the Republic of Korea (RoK), 397 in Saudi Arabia, 382 in Laos, 341 in Cambodia, 131 in Macau, 96 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), 65 in the Republic of Cyprus, and 25 in Russia.

In the past nine months, more than 67,500 workers have been sent abroad. The main markets have been Taiwan and the RoK, recruiting 27,232 workers and 14,564 respectively.

Despite illegal residence of some Vietnamese guest workers in the RoK in recent times, the department said that the RoK will continue to receive eligible Vietnamese workers.

The department added that flights are scheduled every week to send Vietnamese workers to the RoK. Many workers who received certificates of the Korean language have participated in training courses before travelling.

Clean water project for students in rural areas

More than 12,000 students from 24 schools in 10 rural provinces will benefit from a US$50,000 project, named ‘For a Better Life’, which provides clean drinking water to them through the installation of UV water filtration systems in schools.

The 12-month project is funded by Dai-ichi Life Insurance through the East Meets West Foundation in Vietnam.

The latest statistics from the Ministry of Health’s Preventive Medicine Department said that 50 percent of rural schools lacked access to clean drinking water, 5 percent used water from rivers and lakes and 20 percent had no access to water at all.

Child protection program under review

The government is determined to protect children and make their lives safer, thus ensuring social stability, said the Deputy Minister of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA) Doan Mau Diep.

Deputy Minister Diep affirmed this at a seminar in Quang Ninh Province on October 6 on the implementation of the Prime Minister’s decision on a National Program on Child Protection.

He said the program indicates great efforts in consolidating the organizational and personnel structure and increasing the State budget for the issue at both central and local levels.

The two-day event is focused on the building of legal and technical tools to assess the effectiveness of the program.

MOLISA’s Child Care and Protection Department will report the implementation of the project to support street children in the 2009-2011 period and direction for the model in the 2011-2015 period.

The National Program on Child Protection is aimed at reducing the rate of children with special needs to under 5.5 percent; providing them with care, recuperation and rehabilitation; and identifying and providing early intervention to 70 percent of highly vulnerable children, including those in ethnic-inhabited regions.

RoK supports new rural communes in Tien Giang

The Republic of Korea (RoK) has supported two new rural communes in the southern province of Tien Giang to improve local people’s living conditions.

This is part of a project funded by the Korean Cultural Institute (KCI), which aims to implement charity activities in the province.

The RoK has also assisted in building two libraries in Tan Thanh and Binh Nhi communes with a total fund of VND500 million. Each library has been equipped with more than 500 book titles, chairs and desks, and workrooms in order to improve local residents’ opportunities to learn.

The RoK has also provided VND100 million to poor households in these communes to help them develop poultry breeding and build seven new houses worth VND20 million each.

Man struggles to survive in sewer for hours

Nguyen Duy Khanh, a 33-year-old resident in Quyet Thang Ward in the Central Highlands town of Kon Tum, told Tuoi Tre about his three hours struggling to survive after he fell into a sewer because of a soil collapse.

“At about 8 pm on October 3, while it was raining, I wore a raincoat and left home to buy cigarettes. While I was walking in the alley, the ground under my feet suddenly collapsed and I fell into a drain sewer. A whirlpool of water in the sewer plunged me and swept me away. I tried to come to the surface of the water and found total darkness around me and felt stuffy with the stinking smell of the sewage water. I thought the gap between the surface and the ceiling of the sewer was just 20 cm.

“The current was very strong and kept sweeping me away. At the time when I felt totally desperate, I saw a light fall into the drain from a small opening on the ceiling of the sewer. I stretched my arm to the hole and held firmly onto the edge of the opening with one hand. I took off the raincoat so that I became lighter and could swing to the edge longer.

“When I was about to shout for help, the strong current swept me away again and I began exhausted and I thought that I would die there without knowledge of anybody. When I no longer stood up to the sweeping current, my body hit a large wooden bar. I tried to hold on to the bar with my hands for a rest and also found a slot on the ceiling of the sewer.”

Khanh said he had to use all of the strength he had to cling onto the edge of the slot that he thought was a manhole on a road, since he could hear the sound of vehicles running.

“With my hands grasping to the manhole, I began shouting for help. Though I screamed for about 2 hours, nobody came to rescue me. I felt terribly cold and exhausted. I then pulled my wallet out of my trousers and put it into the slot thinking that it might be a sign for my wife to find my body after I die.”

Khanh said a moment later, he heard the sound of a motorbike engine from the slot. He shouted for help again. This time he was lucky since he heard the sound of men talking. They then came and found him and called others to the rescue. They managed to force the manhole cover open and pulled Khanh out of the sewer.

Nguyen Thi Ly, Khanh’s wife, told Tuoi Tre that she and others were looking for Khanh everywhere while he was in the sewer.

Ly said some people told her that Khanh might have gone to a pub to drink with his friends, but she continued to look for him, despite the heavy rain, until 11 pm, when she had to return home as she was too tired to continue her search.

“At that time a man drove him home. He was wet through and totally exhausted…” Ly said.
Huynh Trung Duong, 21, one of the young men who helped to rescue Khanh, said, “That day, my friends and I were going home on our motorbikes when we heard someone shouting for help. We stopped and after a while, we could find two fingers moving at a manhole… Khanh said he was very cold… His entire body turned blue when we pulled him up from the sewer. After managing to warm him up, I drove him home.”

Khanh and his wife are natives of Son Tinh District, Quang Ngai Province and moved to Kon Tum a few years ago to make a living as small traders.

Additional US$30 million for forestry development

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has approved a proposal by the Ministry of Planning and Investment to allocate an additional US$30 million to a project on forestry development.

The fund is provided by the International Development Association (IDA) under the World Bank (WB).

With the additional grant, the project, which also submitted a proposal to extend the time for implementation, will have a total investment of US$99.8 million, mostly sourced from official development assistance (ODA).

Japan to help Quang Binh build bridge

The Japanese Government will help the central province of Quang Binh build a suspension bridge in Son Trach commune, Bo Trach district.

The project is funded with 105,000 USD in non-refundable aid by the Japanese government, which signed a contract on Oct. 6 in Hanoi.

Under the contract, the assistance will be used to construct a suspension bridge to connect the two hamlets of Tram and Me in Son Trach commune, which are separated by the Son River.

The bridge is expected to bring safety and convenience to the local people while the separation affects their life.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, the Japanese Ambassador to Vietnam Yasuaki Tanizaki expressed hope that the project will contribute to improving mobility in Son Trach commune, as well as promoting the friendship and mutual understanding between the two countries’ people.

VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre