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Talks to
focus on tackling ODA fraud
The first meeting
of the Viet Nam-Japan Joint Committee, which will discuss measures to prevent
fraud during the implementation of ODA projects alongside reforms for
relevant policies, will be held on April 4 in Ha Noi.
The committee will
be chaired by a deputy minister of transport and the Charge d'Affaires ad
Interim at the Japanese Embassy in Ha Noi.
A working group
from the Ministry led by Deputy Minister Nguyen Ngoc Dong visited
The team worked
with
Dong briefed the
Japanese officials on the response of the Vietnamese side after receiving the
information and asked Japanese authorities to investigate the charges and
share news related to their conclusions.
Highlighting the
Vietnamese side's prompt, positive and drastic response, the Japanese side
said the case had been transferred to the judicial forces of
They also asked the
Vietnamese side to help put forth measures to prevent corruption, bribery and
unfair competition during the implementation of ODA-funded projects.
Dong proposed that
JICA consider ways to renovate its lending mechanism to strengthen
competition. He said his ministry had advised the Government to assign public
security forces to work with
Project
helps better labour relations
The Ministry of
Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs, in conjunction with the
International Labour Organisation, held a seminar to implement a project on
developing labour relations in several cities and provinces in
The project aims to
build a relations system that conforms with the 2012 Labour Code and the 2012
Trade Union Law, as well as improve the relationship between employers and
workers.
It will be
implemented in
In the 2017-2020
period, successful activities will be expanded nationwide.
During the seminar,
participants raised several challenges that need to be solved, including the
improvement of labourers’ living conditions, measures to deal with strikes
and the role of trade unions in the connection with employers.-
Deputy Minister of
Natural Resources and Environment Bui Cach Tuyen has affirmed
Working with Deputy
Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Rejoice Mabidfhasi as part of his
trip to
Deputy Minister
Mabudafhasi praised the Vietnamese delegation’s visit as a combined effort by
the two governments and people to deepen their partnership and realise the
2012 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in
During its stay,
the delegation also toured a number of South African agencies and natural
reserves.
Over 51 percent of
the sum will be sourced from the city budget with a view to helping 17
communes meet the 19 national criteria for effective rural communities. The
remaining are expected to meet 15 criteria, heard a recent conference in
Four years since
the target programme on new rural development was launched, the city has seen
56 communes from the districts of Cu Chi, Can Gio, Hoc Mon, Binh Chanh and
Nha Be join the effort, with six of them now meeting all the criteria.
As of January 2014,
its total investment for the cause hit about 12.3 trillion VND (585 million
USD) which was spent on 1,500 new buildings, the upgrade of over 730
dilapidated houses and an increase in production and trading.
The rate of poor
households with an annual per-capita income of 12 million VND (570 USD) was
brought down from 5.77 percent in 2010 to 1.15 percent in 2013. More than 86
percent of impoverished families in six model communes have escaped poverty.
Deputy Minister of
Agriculture and Rural Development and head of the Central Steering Committee
for the target programme Tran Thanh
On the occasion,
many municipal units signed an agreement to help five districts become new
rural areas.-
Deputy
minister affirms resolve in improving personnel quality
Deputy Minister of
Home Affairs Tran Anh Tuan has re-affirmed the Government’s resolve to
improve the quality of the contingent of public workers.
In a recent
interview granted to the Vietnam News Agency, the deputy minister said all
ministries, sectors and localities have taken measures to enforce the laws on
public and civil workers. One of the measures is to build a set of
standardized qualifications required of public and civil servants at both
central and grassroots levels. A number of public agencies and local
administrations have conducted examinations to recruit public servants to
ensure fairness and transparency.
Deputy minister
Tuan, however, admitted that the quality of the contingent of public servants
still leaves much to be desired, particularly in terms of the sense of
responsibility and working style and capacity.
He said that is the
reason why the Prime Minister has issued an instructive on fighting negative
phenomena in the management of public workers.
He stressed that
those workers who have low sense of responsibility and fail to fulfil their
duties must be sacked while leaders of public agencies should set good
examples for their subordinates in order to enhance the quality of public
services, meeting the demand of the public.
The deputy minister
also called on the public as well as the mass media to monitor the work of
public servants, contributing to building a healthy and transparent system of
public administration.-
Vietnam
Youth-Students Association debuts in Malaysia
The Vietnamese
Youth and Students Association (VYSA) has been established in
The association
elected an 11-member executive board, with Tran Quoc Huy, a research student
from the
Addressing a recent
inauguration ceremony, Huy noted the organisation gathers all young people
and students to work and study to contribute to the homeland. It protects the
legitimate rights of young Vietnamese people and students, and develops equal
ties with other students associations in
Nguyen Hong Phuong,
deputy secretary of the Party Committee of the Vietnamese Embassy in
Malaysia, welcomed the founding of the association which she said is of great
importance as more young Vietnamese people and students are coming to work
and study in Malaysia.
The Vietnamese
embassy will create all possible conditions for the association to operate
and strengthen cooperation with their foreign partners, she said.
The
Officials from the
HCM City Steering Centre for the Urban Flood Control Programme said they
would submit zoning plans for this to the People's Committee for approval in
the second quarter. But they did not mention a likely schedule for the work.
The reservoirs are
expected to store tens of millions of cubic metres of water during the rainy
season.
According to Do Tan
Long of the centre, since rainfall in the city keeps increasing because of
the impact of climate change, building the reservoirs is a good solution.
They will help ease
the train on the drainage system during heavy rains and high tides, which
have for years causing flooding.
The large
reservoirs would be funded by public funds while money for the small ones
would be "mobilised from people," he said.
Some existing
reservoirs that were unused would also be used again, he added.
A plan to build
reservoirs was approved by the city Party Committee three years ago, but it
remains on paper.
At a recent meeting
with the city government, Le Thanh Hai, the Party Committee secretary, said
no reservoirs had been built since, indicating a "weakness" in
governance.
Flood prevention
was among six major programmes the city planned to work on between 2011 and
2015. While the number of areas that traditionally flood has been reducing
gradually over the last few years, many new areas are becoming affected
instead.
At the meeting, Le
Hoang Quan, chairman of the city People's Committee, admitted that the flood
prevention programme was not really sustainable.
According to the
People's Committee, in the past three years the city completed several flood
prevention projects, including construction of a sluice gate in the Nhieu Loc
–
Quan said the
reservoirs would get priority and be allocated funds.
Between 2011 and
2013, the city spent VND1.57 trillion (US$74.7 million) on flood prevention.
Authorities
promote use of quality motorcycle helmets
A campaign to issue
quality crash helmets to children and their parents will start at four
primary schools in
Launched on Friday,
it will be carried out by the National Traffic Safety Committee in
co-operation with Ministry of Education and Training and Asia Injury
Prevention (AIP) Foundation with funding from US healthcare company Abbott.
The four schools
are Cau Xang and Tan Quy Tay in Binh Chanh District and Truong Dinh and
Nguyen Thai Binh in District 12, where only 20-30 per cent of students wear
helmets when they are dropped off or picked up on motorbikes by adults.
From now until
June, students at the four schools will get 4,289 free helmets and teachers,
238. Students' parents will be offered quality helmets at a subsidised price
in exchange for their old ones.
Students as well as
their parents and teachers will be trained in the right way to wear a helmet
and taught about the value of wearing quality helmets through workshops and
activities outside classrooms.
Hoardings exhorting
the use of quality helmets will be put up in front of the four schools.
In the next two
years the campaign will be expanded to the Mekong Delta and Ha Noi.
Mirjam Sidik, AIP
Foundation's chief executive officer, said even though adult helmet use rates
are high in the country, the World Health Organization found that 82 per cent
of helmets worn on
"We are doing
more to encourage motorcyclists, including children, to wear standard helmets
that can protect their heads effectively in an event of a crash," she
said, adding that the project represents this shift.
In 2010,
There were 4,000
fatalities of which nearly 2,000 people aged 15 to 19 and 1,436 aged less
than 14 died of brain injuries.
Vocational
schools need accreditation
To ensure quality,
vocational schools must affiliate themselves with agencies like the
Speaking at a
conference on ensuring quality at job training schools held last Friday by
"I completely
believe that accreditation will help schools become better and ensure training
quality if they strictly adhere to accreditation norms," she added.
Dr Pham Xuan Thanh,
deputy head of the Ministry of Education and Training's General Department
for Educational Testing and Accreditation, admitted that accreditation to
ensure quality has not been a focus for professional schools.
Only 99 of 294 such
schools in the country have completed even the first step in the
accreditation process, that of self-assessment, he said.
The self-assessment
showed that training quality is low, he added.
Dung said the low
training quality and failure of graduates to get jobs are causing a drop in
the popularity of vocational schools.
But the schools
themselves blamed the higher intake by universities and colleges each year.
According to the
ministry's Professional Education Department, the number of applications to
professional secondary schools nationwide has been plunging. For instance,
the number fell by almost a third to around 180,000 last year.
Because of the
difficulty in attracting candidates, three private schools in
Dung said many
professional schools seem to forget their main mission of training people to
become a technicians or skilled worker in various occupations.
If they focus on
ensuring their students master professional skills, "more and more
learners … [will] apply."
Since learners'
needs are varied, "vocational schools do not need to worry about getting
candidates," she said, adding that many graduates and post-graduates are
applying to professional schools proves this.
Professor Vu Gia
Hien, rector of Au Viet Intermediate School, said that the need for
industrial workers is very high not only in
The General
Department of Vocational Training said the country's ratio of university
graduates to vocational trainees is 1:3 as against 1:10 in neighbouring
countries, meaning the country lacks skilled workers and technicians to
ensure socio-economic development.
According to
Ninh Thuan
halts ops at re-opened mine
The People's
Committee of Ninh Thuan Province has told the Quang Thuan - Ninh Thuan Co. to
halt operations at their titanium-zircon mining area following its recent
reopening.
The statement was
made by Vo Dai, deputy chairman of the province, during a recent press
conference.
The residents from
the communes of Son Hai 1 and Son Hai 2 had protested at the plant for six
days, since its reopening on March 20.
They also destroyed
plant facilities in an effort to stop the company from operating.
The residents
complained to the provincial People's Committee about damage to the
environment caused by the plant, including landslides, less underground water
and the spreading of sand flies.
The mining area was
closed two years earlier for causing pollution and due to a lack of required
legal documents.
Transportation
costs among region's highest
Small-scale
operations, improper infrastructure and a lack of co-operation among
transport enterprises has inflated Viet Nam's transportation costs above that
of neighbouring countries, according to a seminar held yesterday.
Speaking at the
seminar titled "Transportation costs in
Typically,
transportation costs account for less than 10 per cent of gross domestic
production in developed countries, with the percentage in developing
countries around 14-15 per cent.
He said that lower
transportation costs were vital for the country's development and
competitiveness, especially given the increasingly tough regional and global
environment.
Nguyen Xuan Thuy,
deputy head of Transportation Department under Viet Nam Road Administration,
said
However, most of
the enterprises were operating on a small-scale with less than 10 vehicles,
he said.
"The small
enterprises usually don't have a business network or channel to contact
clients, which resulted in inefficient operations," he said.
For example,
according to the Transport Development and Strategy Institute, around 70 per
cent of trucks carried goods one way and were empty on return journeys. This
increased the cost of transporting goods on the roads by 30 per cent.
The costs were also
pushed up because providers were using old coaches or trucks that were not
fuel efficient and required a frequent maintenance – which raised the risk of
traffic accidents, he said.
Moreover, the need
to develop a depot system to gather and distribute goods on long-distance
routes had fallen by the wayside, he said, explaining that ferrying huge
amounts of small trucks on long routes would be more costly. Small, scattered
depots required more time to collect, load and unload goods, he said.
According to the
Viet Nam Automobile Transportation Association, in the last 15 years, the
price of passenger transportation had risen sevenfold in Viet Nam, not accounting
for inflated prices during peak holiday periods.
The higher prices
were blamed on the increasing cost of operating cars, buying fuel, employing
labour and paying road fees.
According to a
World Bank report, logistical costs in
The report shows
that logistics operations in
These drawbacks can
be reverted if the country adopts a number of actions, such as minimizing
paper-based processes in the customs and technical clearance of imports and
exports, the report said. It also advocated for
Ammonia
hits groundwater in Ha Nam
Ammonia in
groundwater in the northern Ha Nam Province exceeds permitted levels by
hundreds of times, according to officials of the provincial Department of
Natural Resources and Environment.
Water testing
conducted on 15 water samples by the department last December revealed that
ammonia contamination in groundwater was found at numerous locations in the
province.
Further, the
concentrations of ammonia in Bo De and Boi Cau communes in Binh Luc District
were 700 and 600 times higher, respectively, than allowable limits.
The districts of
Binh Luc, Duy Tien, and Ly Nhan have reported the highest levels of ammonia
concentrations in groundwater, the department said.
A higher level,
though, has been associated with causing cancers, said officials.
The Department of
Natural Resources and Environment has instructed the Centre for Environmental
Monitoring to conduct water analysis twice a year. The results must be
publicised so that responsible agencies can introduce effective measures to
eliminate the contamination.
Local authorities
will also call for support from international organisations to stop the
contamination of the ground water.
Meanwhile,
residents are advised to use rain water for their daily consumption.
Chemicals are now
being used to treat ammonia-contaminated water in Ly Nhan District's Nhan
Khang Commune medical clinic, but they can not be widely used due to their
high costs.
Data shows that
almost 82 per cent of the local population has been provided with safe water.
Additionally, all
residents living along
Over
110,000 suburban Hanoians to finally access clean water
More than 110,000
people in
The municipal
People’s Committee has approved five projects, which aim to develop
inter-communal clean water supply systems in the five districts.
Accordingly, a
facility with a capacity of 2,800 cubic metres a day will benefit over 14,000
locals in the Co Do and Phong Van communes of Ba Vi district.
It will be built in
2014-2015 with a total investment of over 82 billion VND (3.85 million USD) sourced
from the 2013-2015 National Rural Water Supply and Sanitation National Target
Programme.
Another facility
will be also built under this programme in Me Linh district’s Thanh Lam, Dai
Thinh and Tam Dong communes with about 36,000 residents.
Once completed, the
projects are expected to promote a sustainable clean water model for rural
residential areas, thus further fostering socio-economic development in the
city.
VNA/VNS/VOV
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Thứ Ba, 1 tháng 4, 2014
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