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Social News 22/3
Danish firm to help control flooding in HCMC
Denmark-based firm Cold Flood Prevention is expected to pilot
a project to control flooding caused by high tides at
In December last year and January this year, the HCMC
Department of Transport and related agencies met with representatives of Cold
Flood Prevention to discuss the feasibility of using its technologies to
control flooding in the city.
The department also invited the company’s representatives to
inspect some flood-prone areas in districts 7, 8, and Binh Thanh before
suggesting effective technological solutions to protect these areas from
flooding.
The firm later decided to carry out a pilot project free-of-charge
at
The firm plans to build a dyke that is 50 meters long and 0.52
meters high to test how it works in one to two days before having it adjusted
in line with the flooding situation when tides rise to more than 1.6 meters.
The firm’s flooding control products cost between 394-443
euros a meter.
Test-uses surveillance cameras to curb reckless driving
Hanoi traffic police are handling traffic law breakers via
surveillance cameras on a trial basis that help them crack down on their
violations just moments after they are detected, a police officer has said.
Major Pham Quang Minh, deputy chief of a team tasked with
commanding traffic and operating traffic signals, under the Hanoi Traffic
Police Department, said his unit is coordinating with four other traffic
police teams to curb lawbreaking acts such as running the lights or
encroaching on the wrong lanes.
Under the pilot plan, 450 surveillance cameras have been
installed on major routes in the city.
As soon as images of traffic rule violations are transmitted
to the
At the same time, information related to the infringements
will also be sent to those members through walkie-talkies, Minh said.
With the images and information provided, traffic police
officers can stop the lawbreakers and halt their violations instantly, Minh
added.
“We arrange six staff members at the center for each working
shift. About 40 cases of violations are caught on tape per day on average and
the recorded images are objective evidence of lawbreaking behaviors,” Minh
said.
Traffic rule breakers often argue with – or even resist –
police officers who pull them over for signs of violations, but now they
cannot deny what they have done thanks to the surveillance camera system, the
official said.
Senior Lieutenant Nguyen Hoang Hai, from Traffic Police Team
No. 3, said that most people in
After looking at the images of their violations, no violators
have had any negative reactions to traffic police officers so far, Hai
said.
Education promoted in the Central Highlands
Central Highlands provinces have prioritised investment in
education for ethnic minority groups, contributing to fostering
socio-economic development in the region, according to the Central Highlands
Steering Committee.
After national liberation in 1975, the localities have seen a
significant increase in the number of academic facilities thanks to regional
investment in education.
As many as 3,423 schools and 49,244 classes have been built to
meet public demand. To date, most communes in the region have their own
kindergartens, primary schools and secondary schools.
For the 2014-2015 academic year, Dak Lak province is offering
classes at 987 schools, a sixfold increase from 1975.
The Central Highlands built 57 ethnic group boarding schools
and 86 semi-boarding schools o accommodate students from remote areas.
Universities and colleges also expanded in both scale and
specialities to meet the regional demands for human resources. The provinces
also assigned 2,034 ethnic students to pursue their studies in other colleges
and universities nationwide to foster high quality labour serving the
socio-economic development in the region.
Ethnic language teaching programmes are also being promoted;
Dak Lak province is teaching Ede in 86 primary schools and 12 boarding
schools and Dak Nong has given Ede, M’nong and Ma lessons to teachers in
ethnic minority regions.
The provinces have carried out policies benefiting ethnic
minority students, including the provisions of books, learning supplies, tuition
fees, exam fees, transport fees and health insurance.
The Central Highlands comprise five provinces of Lam Dong, Gia
Lai, Dak Lak, Dak Nong and Kon Tum.
Electricity access brings light to families in remote Tuyen
Quang
All hamlets in the northern mountainous
More than 200,000 provincial households now have a regular
supply of electricity, an increase of 40,000 since 2009.
Da Ban 1 and Da Ban 2 are the most disadvantaged hamlets of My
Bang commune, Yen Son district, with almost all residents hailing from the
Dao ethnic group.
Le Chi Cong, head of Da Ban 1 hamlet, recalled the hardships
of life when all 148 households did not have electricity. Although they spent
nearly VND100 million (US$4,760) on connecting their houses to power lines
from neighbouring areas, electricity was weak and unstable due to the long
distances and inferior electric wire quality.
Other families used water turbines to produce power, but these
machines were only operational in the rainy season and became useless in the
dry season, Cong said.
Tuong Van Quan, a resident in Da Ban 1, said since the hamlet
gained access to the national grid, his rice husking expenses have been cut
by VND1,000 for every 10kg of rice thanks to the availability of
electricity-powered facilities.
Meanwhile, 134 houses in neighbouring Da Ban 2 have also
finally accessed electricity thanks to the national new-style rural area
building programme carried out in the locality since 2011, according to the
head of the hamlet, Ly Van Cang.
Local families have bought lighting devices as well as
agricultural machinery, such as rice hullers and cassava grinders, that help
them reduce production time and expenses, he added.
Bui Quang Hung, Chairman of the My Bang communal People’s
Committee, said under the rural area building programme, the State-run Tuyen
Quang Power Company built more than 4km of high-voltage lines, 15km of
low-voltage lines, and two substations at a total cost of VND10 billion
(US$476,000) last year, providing all houses in Da Ban 1 and 2 with
electricity from the national grid.
Power access is a prerequisite for socio-economic development,
helping My Bang narrow the gap between rural and urban areas to become one of
the first three communes in Tuyen Quang province to meet all 19 requirements
of the rural area building programme, he noted.
Food safety – a problem
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) in
collaboration with the Canadian Embassy in
Speaking at the opening, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and
Rural Development Vu Van Tam stressed that food safety has always been a
primary concern of the government and citizens of the country.
However in the context of integration, food safety is even a
more pressing issue today than it has been in the past Tam said, particularly
as it relates to standards for imports of food and agriculture products from
other nations.
It is imperative that the government have clear and concise
health and safety regulations in place to reduce disputes between foreign and
domestic businesses conducting importing and exporting activities.
Nguyen Nhu Tiep, head of the National Agro-Forestry-Fisheries
Quality Assurance Department in turn said that to best insure consumers are
supplied with food that is safe to eat and resolve trade issues; the
department is devising health and safety regulations in line with those
promulgated by the World Trade Organization.
However, Tiep said that there remain obstacles to implementing
the regulations in compliance with that guidance due to limited staff
capabilities, lack of funding and lack of co-ordination among MARD, the
Ministry of Health and Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT).
Lucia Frick, a consultant from the Canada Department of
Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada echoed Tiep’s sentiments
underscoring the need to strengthen co-ordination among the three ministries
and to improve staff performance and capabilities.
Frick was also adamant on the need for strict punishments for
those who violate food safety laws in
Veteran silently finds his comrades
Veteran Vu Hong Sau, in Hoa Lu ward, Pleiku city, Gia Lai
province, has kept returning to old battlefields on his own to find his
comrades’ sets of remains though the war has ended for decades.
Born in Gia Hoa commune, Gia Vien district, Ninh Binh
province, Vu Hong Sau joined the army for the national anti-American
resistance war in 1968. During 25 years serving in the army, he had always
fulfilled all his assigned tasks in whatever positions.
Having demobilized, Sau concentrated on developing his
family’s economy and actively participated in social activities in his native
land. Despite being busy with every day’s work to support his family, Sau had
not a single day without thinking of his comrades-in arms especially those
who had laid down their lives for the national independence and freedom.
In 1994, he decided to return to the old battlefields to find
his comrades’ remains and since then Sau has been doing such a noble job
tirelessly.
Especially, he only used his retirement pension to cover his
journeys’ expenses back to the old battlefields. His efforts had been paid
off as he had found and collected more than 30 sets of remains of his
comrades.
He said that he deemed it his responsibility and a token of
gratitude to his comrades-in-arms to find and repatriate martyrs’ remains to
their hometowns for partly ease of the pain of the martyrs’ families.
Veteran Sau’s good deeds are praised by local people as an
example for young generations, affirmed Secretary of the Hoa Lu ward’s Party
Committee Le Viet Nhuong.
Exhibition displays skeletons in gay people's closets
Cat Thy learned about social stigma very early in life. She
played with dolls as a kid, and always loved to dress in girls’ clothes.
All went well until she turned seven, when her friends started
to abandon her, and that made her realize her behavior was not acceptable for
someone born a boy.
She dropped out of school at 15 to save herself from peer
hostility.
A year later she started to look for unofficial beauty
services that included direct injection of liquid silicon into her face and
chest to look more like a woman.
“It’s very uncomfortable, but I’ve got used to it,” Tuoi Tre
newspaper quotes her as saying.
She takes two or three birth control pills a day, which she
believes have hormonal effects that keep her breasts in shape.
The 28-year-old is still pretty much in hiding, but she and
some 80 members of the LGBT community in
The Drawers presents items they sent, those that are most
closely connected with their life and journey to achieve their true gender
identity, not the one the society wants them to carry.
In Thy’s drawer are many big needles, a box of glue, several
bags of silicon liquid and different kinds of birth control pills.
“I have to have regular injections in some places and the
holes there are big now. Sometimes I have to use glue to cover them or the
silicon would flow out,” Thy says in a note sent to the exhibition from
“The bruises on my body are the results of glue burns.”
Another drawer, this one belonging to Nang, 23, of
“I’m a lesbian and my family keeps scolding me about that,”
she says. “Life’s so bitter and ironic. I can just laugh about my misery,
about how people see me.” But the drawers are not all sad.
Mong, a transsexual from
“It was humiliating for her. She would beat me and rub salt on
the injuries. “She wished she had laid an egg instead.”
When Mong grew up, many boys from the families that used to
tease her opted for heroin while she went into charity.
Her mother started to grow more accepting. Several years ago
her mother asked her to accompany her to the market to buy cloth for a dress.
“I still remember what my mother said in front of the market:
that she wanted to buy clothes for her daughter, pointing at me. I was so
happy.”
The exhibition, backed by UNESCO, the Swedish Institute and
the Swedish embassy in
It has drawn many people who stand quietly looking at the
items and reading the notes that have come along.
Nguyen Van Anh, director of the Center for Studies and Applied
Sciences in Gender, Family, Women and Adolescents in Hanoi, who was among the
people behind the exhibition idea, said everyone has some secret drawers, and
the exhibition gives LGBT people a chance to share theirs.
“It’s not easy to open your secret drawer; there’s the risk
that the majority will throw stones at it just because it’s different from
the norm,” Anh was quoted as saying by Tuoi Tre.
“But no matter how much it is buried, the pain and desire will
still be burning and it would be even worse.”
Camilla Mellander, the Swedish ambassador in
The exhibition is one step in the commitment being realized,
she said. It is aimed at achieving a society where no one feels any pressure
or rejection for being gay, she said.
Agencies told to step up implementation of anti-torture
convention
Vietnamese ministries have been requested by the Prime
Minister to step up their inspections into allegations of torture and their
settlement of cases, as stipulated in the United Nations Convention against
Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatments or Punishments
(CAT).
Authorised agencies have also been ordered to publicise legal
regulations on torture prevention and the convention’s content, and to
strengthen international cooperation in torture prevention.
The Supreme People’s Procuracy has been assigned to coordinate
with the Supreme People’s Court, and the ministries of Public Security,
Justice, and National Defence to overhaul regulations stipulated in the
Criminal Procedure Code, the Civil Code, the Law on State Compensation
Liability, the Law on Complaints, and the Law on Denunciations, bringing them
in line with the CAT.
The CAT is one of the most important multilateral international
treaties on human rights, and aims to eradicate cruel and inhumane treatment
and punishment. It was approved by the UN resolution No. 39/46 in 1984 and
took effect from June 26, 1987.
In
Ho Chi Minh City girl provides unconditional love, care for
stray cats
A
Kim Anh, in her 20s, has provided medical treatment, care, and
love for stray, ill-treated felines in her house in District 4 so far, local
newswire VnExpress reported.
She first stumbled upon a motionless, starved kitten at a
market near her home over two years ago.
Without hesitation, the girl brought the distressed animal
home.
During an outing with her boyfriend one day, Anh heard
distress meows in the lower part of a bridge.
The couple pulled over, rummaging through a garbage bin nearby
and finding a pair of kittens which were strapped tight in a plastic bag and
dumped into the bin.
Anh immediately came to their rescue and continued to care for
them at her home.
Once she even found a litter of eight kittens, with their
umbilical cords on, which were thrown away at
The cats have grown up to be healthy, agile mice catchers.
Sensing a calling to help cats in need, Anh began to keep an
eye on stray, ill-treated felines on roads, in parks, near markets, and at
dumping grounds.
She cares for the healthy cats herself while sending the
injured to vets.
The girl is elated at the full recovery of many of her feline
siblings and aches over some deaths despite her efforts to save them.
She said she had saved a kitten which fell off from the third
floor of a building.
The animal was rushed to a vet who said not much could help.
With her persistence and boundless love, Anh painstakingly
looked after the kitten, which later made a miraculous recovery though it
sustains permanent injury to the right eye.
Before going to work and getting home every day, Anh is busy
feeding, cuddling the cats and clearing their mess.
Her mother, younger sister, and some animal-loving neighbors
also help her care for the cats.
Daunting challenges arise when dozens of her cats catch
plagues at the same time.
During such bouts, the girl is worn out taking them to vets
and sanitizing her home to keep others from being infected.
Anh and her family cover all medical and food costs for the
felines.
She sometimes calls for donations from animal lovers to save
the cats in critical conditions.
As the flock keeps expanding while her home does not have
enough space, Anh has no choice but to find new owners for some of her cats
by posting notices on social networks.
She always makes sure that the new owners are willing to take
good care of the cats and her beloved fluffy friends will not go through
ordeals of abuse or ill treatment again.
Ship captain held for stealing from foreign visitor in
Vietnam's Ha Long Bay
Vietnamese police have arrested the captain of a cruise ship
and an attendant on suspicion of stealing from a foreign traveler on board a
ship in Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in northern
Police in
According to the case file, at 8:00 am that day, a group of 18
tourists from
At 10:00 am, the ship reached Ga Choi Isle, where the group of
tourists left the passenger hold to look at the scenery from the prow.
When the travelers returned to their places, one of them
discovered their handbag was missing. The tour guide and the victim searched
for the item and finally found it under a chair at the back of the passenger
hold.
The victim then realized that US$20, 200 Chinese yuan ($32)
and VND7 million ($327) in cash was gone from the bag.
The tour guide called the waterway police of Quang Ninh
Province, and before officers arrived Trieu and Thanh returned a $10
banknote, a banknote of 100 Chinese yuan, and 10 banknotes of VND500,000
($23.4) to the victim and asked that the passenger not report the case to
police.
When a police team finally arrived at 11:00 am, Thanh gave the
team VND2.4 million ($112.3) as a bribe and the team then reported the
bribery attempt, according to An Ninh Thu Do (Capital Security) newspaper.
Police questioned Thanh and Trieu and they pleaded guilty to
stealing property from the traveler.
Thanh told police that when the tourist group went to the
prow, he entered the passenger hold and took a handbag placed on a table.
Trieu had told Thanh where the bag was in the hold, and after
Thanh stole it and took the money from it, the former helped the latter place
the bag under a chair at the back of the hold, police said.
The two also confessed that they had committed another theft
on the same vessel on March 8.
In that case, which provincial police have been investigating,
they stole 400 Chinese yuan ($64) from a member of another group of Chinese
tourists when they took a tour of Ti Top Island, also in the bay.
Rivers in central
About 2,500 out of nearly 20,000 hectares of crops in the
central
Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai led a governmental
delegation to visit the province yesterday to work out measures to limit the
consequences of the drought.
The water volume of rivers in Khanh Hoa has fallen by 80
percent because of the low rainfall in 2014, leading to a widespread drought
in the area, according to the provincial People’s Committee.
Some reservoirs contain at most 25-50 percent of their
capacity, while others display a sheer dry bottom.
The total cultivation area in Khanh Hoa for the current
winter-spring season reaches 19,700 hectares, but 2,500 hectares of which,
including 2,000 hectares of rice plantations, have incurred drought.
The worst affected localities are Cam Ranh, Cam Lam, and Ninh
Hoa.
The shortage of water for the production of the following
summer-autumn season is even more threatening.
In
Pham Dinh Huan, head of the representative office of the
irrigation company Nam Khanh Hoa, admitted the crops are threatened because
the Suoi Hanh reservoir and other lakes are running out of water.
Since late last month, the company has installed three pumps
to provide water for the local irrigation network, Huan added.
In Cam Lam District, nearly 200 pig farms have been badly hit
during the past few months.
Le Van Hai, a farmer in Cam Lam’s Cam Thanh Bac Commune, who
keeps 200 pigs aged three months, said he is about to drill a well to find
more water for production.
The cost to drill a well at a depth of 70-80 meters is nearly
VND50 million (US$2,300).
A pig needs an average of nine liters of drinking water and
another big volume for washing, Hai revealed.
Khanh Hoa authorities suggested that the central government
provide aid of VND25 billion ($1.17 million) for limiting and repairing the
damage caused by drought, and grant another VND1 trillion ($46.7 million) to
upgrade the current irrigation networks.
Deputy PM Hai instructed local authorities to pay great
attention to helping farmers cope with the serious drought.
Hai noted he will forward the propositions to the central
government.
Binh Duong aims for urbanization rate of 85% in 2020
The government of
At present, the urbanization rate nears 83% in Di An Town and
over 84% in Thuan An. About two million people are living in the province’s
urban areas of more than 40,600 hectares, which accounts for 15% of the
province’s total area. Around 90,000 people from other provinces come to Binh
Duong to work and live every year.
However, the occupancy rate in urban areas is still low, and
infrastructure links between the province’s urban areas and HCMC have not
been well established.
As the urbanization rate of
There are 28 operational industrial parks covering an area of
more than 9,000 hectares and eight industrial clusters in
Among 33 nations and territories investing in industrial zones
in
Foreigners riding hired bikes without license endanger road
safety on Phu Quoc
Foreign travelers like exploring landscapes on
In recent years, more and more foreign tourists have visited
Phu Quoc off the southern
Such a service benefits its providers and brings convenience
to the users, but a worrying issue is that most of the foreigners who rent
motorcycles do not meet the requirements for riding the vehicles.
This is one of the reasons why an increasing number of
accidents have happened in recent times.
Most foreign visitors who rent motorbikes have no driver’s
license, as required by the law of
The agency pointed out that many of these foreigners often
travel at speed, do not wear crash helmets while driving, or drive on the
wrong lane, thus posing serious threats to road safety.
Over the past years, the Vietnam News Agency said, many
foreign visitors to Phu Quoc have preferred hiring motorcycles to taking
taxis as a means for them to explore the attractions of the island.
Hiring bikes for travel is cheaper than using taxis, and when
driving bikes, travelers can call at any places as they wish, whereas they
cannot do so when using taxicabs.
The motorbike leasing service has been very familiar with
foreign visitors to the island.
A French tourist told the news agency that he had rented a
motorbike and traveled around on it to explore the island, as traveling by
taxi is costlier but less convenient.
From the beginning of 2015 until now, three road accidents
have been caused by foreigners who drove rented motorbikes on Phu Quoc,
killing three people, including two foreigners, and injuring two other
foreigners.
A visitor coming from
The man, however, said that he has been informed of many
accidents brought about by foreigners who drove motorbikes without wearing a
helmet and had no driver’s license.
In order to improve traffic safety and reduce road accidents,
the Phu Quoc police have encouraged providers of motorbike leasing services
to make a commitment that they will not lease their bikes to those tourists,
including foreigners, who have no driver’s license as required by law, said
Lieutenant Colonel Tran Ngoc Quy, a traffic police officer of the Phu Quoc
District Police Department.
Local police have coordinated with hotels to provide their
guests with regulations on road safety and increased patrols on streets to
detect and prevent any violation, Quy said.
Alarm bell sounded over railway accidents
The most recent railway accident in the central
The severe accident in Quang Tri on Tuesday left one dead and three
injured. The north-south train collided with a truck with a full load of
stones while the driver of the truck was trying to cross the railway despite
the coming train. The crash left 15 passenger and cargo trains stranded until
the evening of Wednesday.
Figures of Vietnam Railway Corporation (VRC) showed 86 railway
accidents killed 37 people and injured 48 in January and February alone. Of
these, 10 cases killed nine and injured three during the nine-day Lunar New
Year holiday (Tet), which ended late last month.
The National Traffic Safety Committee said that railway
accidents are on the rise and that violations of safety regulations were the
main cause.
The committee calculated that 80% of serious accidents
occurred at the railway-road intersections, especially those illegally opened
by local residents without barriers and signal lights.
Statistics from VRC showed more than 5,000 roads cross the
railway but only some 1,500 crossroads have signals, automatic warning
devices and watchmen on duty.
The committee has urged localities where the railway goes
through to strengthen supervision and inspection activities and help people
cross the railway in line with safety regulations.
The committee suggested closing the crossroads opened by
locals and building more overpasses. Moreover, VRC needs to cooperate with
local governments to strengthen safety at the points where the north-south
railway and roads meet.
Minister of Health helps matyr's daughter find a job
The Minister of Health, Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, has extended help
to the daughter of a martyr who died in a fight with Chinese forces in the
Spratly archipelago, so that she could have a job to support her poor family.
Phan Thi Trang, the daughter of matyr Phan Huy Son, from Dien
Chau District, Nghe An Province, has been unable to find a job after
graduating from a medicine college. Trang has recently sent a letter to the
Facebook page of the Minister of Health to call for help.
In her letter, Trang said that she urgently needs a job to
support her mother who is suffering from serious kidney problems and her
disabled brother.
"My father was a military doctor and died in 1988 during
the Gac Ma Island battle with the Chinese forces," Trang wrote. "My
mother had struggled to raise my brother who was born with disabilities and
me."
Trang said she decided to follow her father's career and
managed to get into a local medicine school.
After seeing Trang's letter, the Minister of Health has asked
the provincial authorities to help with Trang's situation as a gesture to
share some burden with the matyrs' families in general and to help the
special situation of Trang.
Director of Nghe An Province Department of Health, Bui Dinh
Long, then helped Trang to get a job at
Trang said, "I'll work hard to not disappoint the help
from everyone. Not only I can continue following my father's steps, I also
can take care of my mother and brother."
Forest protection project takes root in Binh Thuan
The central
The 5.26 million USD project, sourced from the Japanese
Government’s official development assistance and Vietnamese state funding,
has been implemented in six mountainous areas since 2012.
To date, the project’s managing board has zoned off an area of
4,200 hectares for natural forest regeneration while building a 15 kilometre
road as part of the effort to develop forest infrastructure. Furthermore, six
forest protection stations have been set up with adequate equipment to
effectively control forest fires.
The project has made great contributions to raising public
awareness in the importance of rehabilitating the forest and protecting its
bio-diversity.
In a bid to increase the project’s efficiency, the provincial
Department of Agriculture and Rural Development is planning to integrate the
project’s components with the national “new-style rural area” programme,
further supporting local residents in the zoned areas.
Binh Thuan is currently home to over 317,000 hectares of
forest land, accounting for 50 percent of the province’s natural land. These
abundant resources play a vital role in regulating the climate in the region
as well as in the central coastal areas.
However, the province’s acreage of forest land has suffered
from degradation, decreasing 31,000 hectares since 2001.
Source: VNA/VNS/VOV/SGT/SGGP/TT/TN/Dantri
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Chủ Nhật, 22 tháng 3, 2015
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