Social News 13/2 Hanoi set to take on poverty The capital city aims to reduce the number of poor households by 10,230 this year, a decrease of 0.6 per cent of last year’s total, and support at least 99 per cent of children in extremely disadvantaged circumstances. These are the main goals of the city’s programmes on social welfare, focusing on poor people and underprivileged children. The city’s Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs said that it would reduce poverty for ethnic minorities by allocating funds from the State budget and organisations and individuals. In 2016, the city reduced the number of poor households by 23,600. As many as 177,230 poor people were eligible for monthly financial support. The city allocated VNĐ240 billion (US$10.5 million) to provide insurance cards for about 386,780 poor people. More than 20,000 poor households received loans, and the city spent VNĐ28.8 billion ($1.26 million) on electric bills for households. This year, the city plans to carry out programmes to protect children. There are nearly 1.8 million children in Hà Nội, 14,000 of which are underprivileged, with 50,780 more at risk of becoming underprivileged. Currently, the city-wide Children Protection Fund has mobilised VNĐ11.9 billion ($523,600), while the district-level funds hit VNĐ6.7 billion ($294,800) for those in need of assistance. The city also aims to implement a child injury prevention model in 584 communes. Sea encroachment collapses houses in Binh Thuan   Landslides, triggered by sea encroachment, high tides and strong winds caused five houses to collapse in the south central province of Binh Thuan on February 11 and 12. The affected households have been evacuated to the Hat Dieu building in Duc Long ward. Another 30 vulnerable households in Tien Duc hamlet, Tien Thanh commune, Phan Thiet city are awaiting evacuation. Le Ngoc Thu, head of Tien Duc hamlet said the area has been affected by seawater intrusion since 2010, destroying 152 houses. Local authorities allocated land for the victims to settle in Tien Binh hamlet, Tien Thanh commune, Thu said, adding that 116 households received land, but only 10 built houses. Most locals scrape a living from fishing, therefore, they cannot afford to build a new house on the land, according to Thu. He called on authorities to help the landslide victims build houses. Ha Long Bay to be patrolled by new tourism police force The northern province of Quang Ninh, home to the world-renowned Ha Long Bay, has been given permission to establish a special tourism police force. In a statement released on February 10, the Government Office said Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc had endorsed the proposal to form the new force. He asked the province, the Ministry of Public Security and other government agencies to cooperate on the pilot scheme. The move aims to protect tourists and cut crime in the area, said Vu Thi Thu Thuy, vice chairman of the province. Quang Ninh welcomed around 8.3 million visitors in 2016, up 7% from the previous year. Of the total, 3.5 million were foreign guests, according to the province’s television station. Located in the Gulf of Tonkin, Ha Long Bay is famous for its emerald green waters and thousands of towering limestone islands topped by rainforests. However, street vendors and criminals who cause trouble for tourists are an issue that local authorities have to deal with. In addition, a number of travel agencies have been caught committing business violations, besmirching the province's reputation. In August last year, Danang, another popular destination for tourists in central Vietnam, said the government had allowed it to form a tourism police force. On the other hand, Ho Chi Minh City has not asked the central government for permission to establish a new force. Children Hospital 1 gets top prize for medical service quality HCM City’s Children Hospital 1 on February 10 was awarded the first prize for medical service quality at the Medical Check-up and Treatment Quality Awards 2016 for its “red-alert” first aid procedure. The Medical Check-up and Treatment Quality Awards 2016 was launched for the first time by the HCM City Department of Health with the goal of honouring the best practices of hospitals operating in the city. Being implemented since 2008, the “red alert” procedure mobilises doctors from different departments to come together to treat a patient, which saved the lives of 10 children in extremely critical conditions, including a baby falling out of his mother’s uterus in a traffic accident.  Besides the Children Hospital 1, the awards also honoured the smart check-up faculty of the Gia Dinh People’s Hospital, the online medical records of the Thu Duc District Hospital, the uprogramme supervising antibiotics use of the Cho Ray Hospital and the robotic surgery technique of the Binh Dan Hospital. According to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tang Chi Thuong, deputy director of the municipal Department of Health, said the goal of the awards is to highlight and multiply creative and effective practices of local hospitals. A total of 35 hospitals have sent 80 entries to compete for the awards. Lao Bao border crossing welcomes first e-visa recipients Libor Machelek and Aneta Sritrova from the Czech Republic are the first two arrivals through the Lao Bao International Border Gate following the start of the new e-visa scheme coming into effect. They were welcomed into the Vietnam north central province of Quang Tri on February 6 by Senior Lieutenant Colonel Ta Quang Hau after having received their visas via the internet.   The new 30-day single-entry electronic visa program for citizens from 40 countries is expected to benefit tourism as it streamlines procedures for foreign tourists to enter the Southeast Asian country. Ha Tinh: Renovated King Mai Hac De temple inaugurated A temple dedicated to King Mai Hac De King was inaugurated in Thich Loc commune, Loc Ha district, the central province of Ha Tinh province. The temple was renovated and expanded over an area of 1,000 sq.m at a total cost of 105 billion VND (4.7 million USD). Earlier, a 10.8m-high copper statue of the King was casted at the Mai Hac De Square in the coastal commune. King Mai Hac De, whose real name was Mai Thuc Loan, was born in Mai Phu village, Loc Ha district, Ha Tinh province and was the leader of the 722 uprising against the rule of the Tang Dynasty in the present-day Thanh Hoa and Nghe An provinces. New project on training officials in religious work The Prime Minister has approved a project on providing training to officials and public employees engaged in religious work during the 2017-2020 period. The project targets public employees at agencies implementing State management of religious affairs at central, provincial and district levels, including Government’s Religious Committee under the Ministry of Home Affairs, religious affairs divisions of provincial-level Departments of Home Affairs, and district-level Division of Home Affairs. Training will also be given to public employees and officials in charge of religious affairs at mass organisations such as the Vietnam Fatherland Front, the Vietnam Women’s Union, the Vietnam Farmers’ Union and the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, along with those of the military and police. The project will be implemented at 63 provinces and centrally-run cities with emphasis given to ethnic minority-inhabited areas and areas with religious problems, with a view to improving the knowledge and skills for officials in dealing with religion-related matters. The goal of the project is to train 25,700 officials and public employees in the period. HCM City acknowledges ethnic people’s contributions to city’s growth The Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) Committee in Ho Chi Minh City held a Lunar New Year meeting on February 12 with representatives from local ethnic minority groups, during which it recognised contributions of the groups to the city’s growth. Nguyen Hoang Nang, President of the committee, reviewed the city’s achievements in the past year, highlighting efforts of ethnic minority groups in all fields, especially their active engagement in movements and campaigns launched by the municipal authorities, VFF and organisations. The groups’ endeavours have helped ensure social security and safety and defence in the city, he said. He also expressed hope that in the coming time, the groups will continue joining hands with the municipal Party Organisation and government to fulfill economic, culture and social targets, thus boosting the city’s growth and improving locals’ living conditions. Meanwhile, Hua Sa Ni from Khmer group who is deputy head of the Ethnic Minority Groups’ Culture Faculty under the Ho Chi Minh City University of Culture, thanked the municipal authorities for their support for ethnic minority people, saying that this is an encouragement for them to further contribute to the development of the city. The city has designed specific policies to assist children from ethnic minority families to get easier access to schooling, while regularly holding meetings and exchanges to strengthen the unity among ethnic groups, he said. Currently, Ho Chi Minh City is home to about 437,500 people from 51 ethnic minority groups, accounting for 6.1 percent of the city’s total population. The majority of whom are from Hoa, Khmer and Cham groups. Lao Cai develops sustainable tourism   The northwestern mountainous province of Lai Cai has made bold investment in developing tourism in an effort to make it a key economic sector. The locality has developed numerous special tourism products and built tourism culture villages in Bac Ha, Sa Pa, Muong Khuong districts, thus preserving and promoting tangible and intangible cultural heritages. A focus has been placed on promoting traditional crafts, such as brocade making, sculpture, blacksmith, and carpentry, as well as local special products such as rice, chili sauce, Sa Pa rose. Community-based tourism models have been developed in ethnic minority areas, contributing to eradicating hunger and reducing poverty while raising the public awareness of protecting traditional cultural values. Lao Cai has over 200 community-based tourism facilities. The Na Hoi – Ta Chai homestay complex in Bac Ha has been recognised as the ASEAN community-based tourism site. The province’s tourism sector has also focused on diversifying its products and improving service quality. Some kinds of tourism have thrived such as resorts in Sa Pa and Bac Ha, ecotourism in connection with Fansipan and Hoang Lien Son National Park, shopping tourism in border gate areas, food discovery tours, spiritual tourism and cross-border tours. Lao Cai has boosted tourism connection with nearby localities such as Yen Bai, Phu Tho, Lai Chau and Ha Giang. Numerous tourism facilities have been built across the province, such as Thanh Kim, Ham Rong, Cat Cat resorts in Sa Pa, Ho Na Co in Bac Ha, and Fansipan cable network. The province has also devised many policies facilitating tourism development with a view to turning itself into a key tourist destination of the northwestern region and the nation by 2030. Lao Cai is featured by the 3,134 metre-high Fansipan peak, known as the roof of the Indochina, terrace fields, and Hoang Lien Son national park with diverse species of flora and fauna. Cloud-covered Sa Pa town is a magnet to domestic and international tourists thanks to its picturesque landscapes and favourable climate for ecotourism development. Besides, the province has numerous traditional festivals, such as the maturity ritual (Cap Sac) of the Dao ethnic minority, horse racing festival in Bac Ha district, as well as temples and pagodas to develop spiritual tourism.  It also boasts 18 national intangible cultural heritages, including the tug-of-war game of the Tay and Giay communities honoured by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and 18 national relic sites. From 2011 – 2015, the number of tourists to Lao Cai increased by 22 percent annually. Tourism has become an important economic sector, contributing 11.5 percent to the province’s GRDP during the  period. In 2016, the locality received 2.7 million visitors, up 33 percent from 2015, including nearly one million foreigners. The sector generated 6.3 trillion VND (278.28 million USD) and created jobs for 10,000 labourers. Binh Phuoc builds houses for poor ethnic minority people The southern province of Binh Phuoc plans to build some 700 households for local poor ethnic minority households in 2017, according to President of the provincial Fatherland Front Committee Nguyen Quang Toan. The programme is estimated to cost nearly 36 billion VND (1.59 million USD) which is mobilised from different resources. According to the provincial Department of Construction, each house will range between 32-40 square metres. The housing programme is one of the province’s measures to encourage the poor overcome difficulties and escape from poverty sustainably. Currently, Binh Phuoc is home to nearly 14,000 poor households (according to multi-dimensional criteria) and over 5,800 near-poor households. The poor households are mainly in districts where most of ethnic minority people are residing, particularly Bu Gia Map district. Among them, 2,743 poor families have no house or living in dilapidated houses. Bac Ninh: Two localities achieve new-style rural criteria Tu Son town and Tien Du district in the northern province of Bac Ninh have been recognised as new-style rural districts for the 2016-2020 period. Tu Son and Tien Du are the first district-level localities in Bac Ninh province that have gained the status, bringing the total number of the country’s new-style rural districts to 30. All 13 communes of Tien Du district have achieved all criteria of a new-style rural commune while the district completed all nine criteria of a new-style rural district. The economic structure of Tien Du district has shifted towards the right direction with the construction and industry sectors accounting for 75.3 percent of the province’s GDP, the trade and service sectors making up 16.6 percent and the agriculture-forestry-seafood sector contributing 8.1 percent. For Tu Son town, by the end of 2016, all of its five communes met criteria of a new-style rural commune and the town completed all nine criteria of a new-style rural district. Bac Ninh province now has 35 new-style rural communes, equivalent to 36.1 percent of its total number. Hà Nội strives to better school healthcare    Nguyễn Tài Thành, a medical worker at Quốc Oai High School in Hà Nội feels put under great pressure at work. The school, in Quốc Oai District, has nearly 1,900 students studying per day, while he is the only medical worker. The greatest pressure, Thành said, was that he must work two back to back shifts per day from 7.15am to 5pm, six days per week. Students can be unsafe when school starts, or fall on school grounds, or suffer from falling blood pressure at midday, he said. “I’m not present to resolve problem, their health can be seriously affected,” he said. Although Thành tries his best, he worries that with such a great amount of work, he can not control all problems. Schools in Hà Nội often have many students, several even have more than 2,000 students, so medical workers face many challenges. The education sector does not have any regulations on how many medical workers schools should have compared with the amount of students. In fact, each school has only one medical worker. And in some schools, medical workers must do other jobs as well. Văn Như Cương, head of the board of directors of the Lương Thế Vinh High School, said that one of the reasons for the problem was that the education sector did not have an official professional faculty for medical workers. School medical workers face as much pressure as medical workers in hospitals, but with their low income, few people wanted to do work for long, said Cương. About 10,000 schools across the country do not have official positions for medical worker as regular members of staff, equivalent to 25 per cent of total schools in the country. Incomplete education ministry statistics show that 90 per cent of schools in the central province of Thanh Hóa do not have an official position for a medical worker as a regular member of staff. In Hà Nội, Phạm Xuân Tiến, deputy director of the municipal Department of Education and Training, said that the capital has more than 2,500 schools from kindergartens to high schools, and every school had medical workers. Tien said that medical workers were always present at schools to take care of students’ health, supervise food safety and hygiene in school kitchens, and educate students on epidemic prevention. More than 90 per cent of the schools have professional medical workers, with teachers doing the work of medical workers at the other schools. About 90 per cent of medical workers at schools are regular members of staff. One of the reasons why not all medical workers are regular members of staff was that since 2015, schools had to temporarily suspend medical workers to check their quality, per Government requirements. Thus, Tiến said, schools founded since 2015 can only sign short-term contracts with medical workers. Most medical workers had basic skills for healthcare services at schools, Tiến said. Ngũ Duy Anh, director of the Department of Student Affairs under the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), said that the role of health services in schools was detailed in Instruction 23 of Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng, issued in 2006. To realise the instruction, the MoET implemented different measures to improve school healthcare services, and considered healthcare as an important duty of schools. Anh said that after 10 years of implementing the instruction, schools had set up infrastructure, manpower and equipment for healthcare services. But schools struggled to improve their healthcare services. At central level, only three or four officials supervise healthcare services at schools. At provincial and municipal level, each department of education and training must have one doctor supervising healthcare services. But in fact, 90 per cent of the officials doing the supervision are teachers. At district level, only 30 per cent of departments of education and training had officials supervising healthcare services, and all of them are teachers. To improve healthcare services at schools, Hà Nội is re-checking and setting up plans to give more training to medical workers. Deputy director Phạm Xuân Tiến said that although about 95 per cent of schools in the city had a well-stocked room for healthcare services, the services still need more investment to properly care for teachers and students. In December last year, Hà Nội held a competition for excellent school medical workers for the first time. The competition was an occasion for school medical workers to share experience and learn from each other, and for educational managers to pay more attention to school healthcare. Tiến said that soon, the city would regulate that schools must pay a fixed amount of money per school year for healthcare services. The city plans to strengthen supervision of medicines at schools with requirements that every school have enough regulated medicine with medical workers present in the healthcare room every day.  VNĐ3.7 billion raised for the disadvantaged The Thiên Mậu Thánh Mẫu Pagoda festival organising committee auctioned a collection of nine lanterns in Thủ Dầu Một City, raising VNĐ3.7 billion (US$163,000) last weekend. The funds will be donated to Lê Văn Tám Elementary School in Thủ Dầu Một City and to poor Chinese residents; a sum will also be donated to the Fatherland Front to help the poor and the disabled in the province. The auction is an annual event held during the pagoda festival, lasting from the 10th to the 15th day of the first lunar month. The charity event drew 50 individuals, businesses, and organisations both from and outside the province. The nine lanterns carry names that are intended to bring prosperity and peace, such as Thánh mẫu ban phước (Blessing of the Goddess), Ngũ phúc lâm môn (Five Luck), Vạn sự như ý (All wishes realised). The starting bid for each lantern was VNĐ 16.8 million ($740). After hours of auctioning, highest bid of VNĐ 800 million ($35,250) went to a lantern named Thuận buồm xuôi gió (Smooth sailing). Đồng Nai, City struggle to meet labour demand Companies in the southern province of Đồng Nai need to find more than 30,000 new employees by the end of next month to make up for the shortage caused by the post-Tết staff turnover, according to the local Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs. Firms in labour-intensive industries such as footwear, electronics, textile and garment are in need of a large number of workers, it said. For instance, TaeKwang Vina Industrial JSC needs 2,000 and Olympus Vietnam, 1,500. According to a spokesperson for the Đồng Nai Garment Corporation, the company urgently needs 2,500 workers, but labour demand constantly outstrips supply in the province. The company has to improve wages and the working environment to retain and attract workers. Most companies require female manual workers with monthly salaries of VNĐ6 million (US$265) per person. Over the course of the whole year the province needs to recruit nearly 79,000 workers, more than 60,600 of them unskilled, the department reports. Companies in Biên Hòa City alone will hire nearly 30,000 workers, with those in Nhơn Trạch and Trảng Bom districts adding 11,000 each. Đồng Nai Province is home to 30 industrial parks and export processing zones with tens of thousands of companies. In HCM City, companies in industrial parks and export processing zones alone need 3,000 manual workers and 300 trained engineers this month, according to the Employment Service Centre of the HCM City Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority. The hiring will be done by both existing companies to expand production and new companies. Trần Anh Tuấn, deputy director of the HCM City Centre for Forecasting Manpower Needs and Labour Market Information, said that post-Tết labour demand in the city was estimated at 20,000. Of that figure, workers with college degrees or higher qualifications accounted for 27 per cent, semi-skilled and skilled workers for 38 per cent and manual workers for the remaining 35 per cent. Navigos Search, a senior and mid-level manager recruitment service provider, has forecast that besides key industries such as manufacturing, banking, retail, and IT, which always have demands for workers, some new industries like advertising and communications are likely to grow rapidly this year after a series of M&A deals done last year. HCM City hospitals raise quality of treatment Hospitals in HCM City have been striving to reach five goals to improve the quality of examinations and treatment, including safety, patient satisfaction, efficient management, effective services, and appropriate costs and prices.   Eight years ago, the city Paediatric Hospital 1, for instance, set up a Red Alert emergency aid procedure to save young patients. The procedure yesterday won first prize in a contest on activities that have improved quality of examination and treatment, organised by the city’s Department of Health. Dr Nguyễn Thanh Hùng, head of the Paediatric Hospital, said the procedure had helped reduce the number of complicated administrative procedures, which in turn had improved the rapid response of emergency aid. “It has been very effective in saving patients with many injuries,” Hùng said. In 2013, for example, two children were brought to the hospital for emergency aid after being stabbed by their neighbour nine times with a knife. The hospital’s Red Alert procedure was activated and within only 15 minutes, doctors and nurses were available to provide emergency aid, conducting a five-hour operation in which two children were saved. “In the last several years, the department has expanded the procedure, which now links hospitals in the city,” he said. Last year, the Ministry of Health instructed all hospitals in the country to carry out the procedure to treat patients in need of emergency aid. In addition, the Thủ Đức District Hospital has successfully piloted an electronic medical records project, creating a database on patients’ health to enhance the tracking of their condition and treatment. Nguyễn Minh Quân, head of Thủ Đức District Hospital, said the hospital’s doctors were ready to share their expertise with other hospitals in the country. “Databases between hospitals are connected, which helps reduce the need for repeated tests and makes it easier to carry out treatment at family medicine clinics,” Quân said. Among other efforts, Chợ Rẫy Hospital and Gia Định People’s Hospital have used software for the control of antibiotics, while Bình Dân Hospital has used robots to assist 20 surgeries. The hospitals’ activities were honoured at an awards ceremony yesterday held in HCM City for a contest to select outstanding activities related to examination and treatment quality. Many of the hospitals have carried out activities to increase patient safety. For instance, Nguyễn Trãi Hospital’s traditional medicine ward uses a plastic card attached to the patient’s bed that notes the number of needles used in acupuncture treatment. This alerts other medical personnel involved in the procedure about how many needles that need to be removed. Dr Tăng Chí Thượng, the deputy head of the Department of Health, said at a meeting reviewing activities and the contest, that the department had issued a handbook on what health facilities should do to improve quality of treatment. The handbook is based on 80 criteria on hospital quality, Thượng said. The department has also increased training for more than 1,600 people and staff working in wards and divisions who are in charge of quality management at hospitals. A database of 3,399 treatment guidelines for hospitals from the city to grassroots levels has been completed in order to standardise treatment. Thượng said that successful programme models should be replicated at other hospitals. Lương Ngọc Khuê, the head of the Department of Health Examination and Treatment at the Ministry of Health, said: “Patients in the city as well as the southern region have received benefits from these improved activities.” Dr Nguyễn Thị Thoa, deputy head of the city’s Health Department’s medical affairs division, said that it had assessed hospitals’ activities for improvement last year. The assessment focused on five groups of criteria: patient satisfaction, human resources, professional activities, development of medical specialities, and quality of treatment. The results showed that city-level hospitals such as 115 People’s Hospital, Gia Định People’s Hospital, Từ Dũ Obstetrics Hospital and Trưng Vương Hospital had high and comprehensive improvement. Thoa said those hospitals had average scores of 3.43 out of a maximum of five. District-level hospitals had an average score of 2.93 and private hospitals an average score of 2.77. The department has instructed city-level hospitals to continue training and technical assistance for district-level hospitals, especially District 3 and 9 hospitals, which had a score of less than 2.5, she said. Private hospitals, especially those in the plastic surgery and cosmetics field, are in need of improvement as well. Eighteen out of 46 of them in the city scored under 2.5.  HCM City police bust 2 drug gangs, arrest 6   Six people belonging to two drug gangs have been arrested for trafficking 14kg of methamphetamine from China to the southern region, the HCM City police said on Thursday. After a month of investigations, the central Department of Drug Criminal Investigation zeroed in on Giáp Văn Đào, 42, of the northern province of Bắc Giang. Together with the city police they caught him red-handed on January 19 while transporting 2.2kg of meth to HCM City. The police seized another 2.8kg from his house in Dĩ An town in the southern province of Bình Dương. On the same day officers arrested Lê Trọng Mạnh, 55, and his wife Nguyễn Thị Xuyến, 28, also of Bắc Giang while they were delivering four kilogrammes of meth to a customer in front of a supermarket in the city’s Gò Vấp District. On questioning, the couple said they were paid VNĐ20 million (US$885) a time by Đào to carry drugs. He regularly hired them as mules to transport to the south drugs he bought at Lạng Sơn Province’s Tân Thanh border gate. Expanding their investigation led the police to Viên Ngọc Dũng, 33, of Gò Vấp District, who had been a loyal Đào customer. They suspected he was buying from Hoàng Phú Huỳnh, 27, of Hải Phòng after Đào’s arrest. On February 7 they caught Huỳnh red-handed while delivering five kilogrammes of meth to Dũng in District 10. Vũ Thị Thu Hà, 46, of Hải Phòng, who had supplied the drugs to Huỳnh, was arrested soon afterwards. HN’s hospital launches online-health advice service The Hà Nội-based E Hospital announced on Friday new services in the fields of online-health advice and at-home patient sample testing. It is be the first State-owned hospital in the city and the north to provide those services. Prof. Lê Ngọc Thành, director of E Hospital – a central general hospital under the Ministry of Health – said an increasing demand for health check-ups and treatment has caused overloads and long-waiting situations at most hospitals and health centres. Therefore, the paid-money services of online-health advice, health-check and sample-taking at home are suitable to elderly, children and immobile patients. “Patients don’t have to wait, suffer crowds or feel uncomfortably cramped, “ he said. The hospital is reaching out to qualified facilities and human resources to meet the demand, according to the director.    The hospital has 900 doctors and health workers. It was designed with 1,000 patient-beds and 11 function rooms for health-checks and treatment, 27 clinical faculties and eight sub-clinical faculties. The hospital has four key treatment centres: heart, gastroenterology, musculoskeletal and skull.  Int’l meet studies Lý Dynasty culture Various aspects of culture and art under the Lý Dynasty (1009-1225) and the importance of preserving its vestiges were discussed at two-day international conference last week. The conference, held in the northern province of Bắc Ninh, the heart of the dynasty, attracted about forty Vietnamese and international scholars, scientists and archaeologists. It was jointly organised by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Việt Nam Institute of Culture, Arts Studies, and University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. “The Lý Dynasty, lasting for more than 200 years, is an important period in Việt Nam history and the topic of culture and arts under this dynasty has received great attention and interest of both Vietnamese and international scholars from different perspectives,” said deputy minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Nguyễn Thị Bích Liên. The two-day conference was a forum for scholars to discuss the development of culture and art under the Lý Dynasty, and also share experiences in preserving historical relics. Scholars have compared art under the Lý Dynasty with that of contemporaries in China, Japan and the Champa Kingdom, Liên noted. Vice Chairman of Bắc Ninh People’s Committee, Nguyễn Văn Phong, said the province was proud to be the hometown of the Lý Dynasty, which had helped preserve and develop Việt Nam’s culture, art and religion, and ensured a peaceful life for its people. Bắc Ninh has 131 relics related to Lý Dynasty, many of them Buddhism pagodas and towers. Over the last several years, Bắc Ninh has implemented practical policies and mechanisms to preserve and tap the value of these relics, Phong said. The conference is among a series of events being held to celebrate the 185th anniversary of establishment and 20th anniversary of re-establishment of Bắc Ninh. Phong said the active contributions of scholars at the conference, including papers presented, would contribute to the further studies on the Lý Dynasty’s culture and arts, and orient preservation work on the relics. The conference covered four main topics: approaches to Lý Dynasty culture and art studies; new discoveries and studies on arts, culture and architecture of Lý Dynasty in Bắc Ninh; art in the context of Buddhism under the Lý Dynasty; and the preservation of historic and cultural relics in the province. Bắc Ninh is a province that neighbours Hà Nội. Its Đình Bảng Village is known as hometown of dynasty founder King Lý Thái Tổ. The province is also well-known for many Buddhist pagodas as Buddhism prospered under the dynasty. The Phật Tích Pagoda, Dạm Pagoda and Đô Temple are some of the prominent ones. VNA/VNS/VOV/SGT/SGGP/TT/TN/Dantri/VNE