HCMC: 2,000 youth join the armed forces

Over 2,000 youth from Ho Chi Minh City on February 25 left their homes to complete their military training.

Le Hoang Quan, Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City and representatives from the armed forces came to see off the new recruits in Tan Phu District yesterday. They all encouraged the young boys to diligently finish all duties set for them by the army.

On the same day, many districts in the city such as 3, 5,9,12, Tan Binh, Go Vap and Thu Duc also held a ceremony to bid adieu to new soldiers joining the armed forces.

The new recruits will serve in military zone 7, the city police, the city’s Fire Fighting division, the Prevention Police Department and the Navy.

The first batch of recruits this year had 100 young persons from Tan Binh and Tan Phu districts join the Navy.

746 youth from six districts of Lam Dong Province have just been recruited into the army. They will complete their military training in four regiments which are part of military zone 7.

Vietnam fisherman rescued by China off Paracel

China used a helicopter to take a Vietnamese captain from his fishing boat to an island of the Hoang Sa (Paracel Islands) for emergency treatment after his accident Wednesday.

The captain, Nguyen Van Hieu, was hit by a crane on his head at 5:30 am February 23 while he was working on his boat QNg 94565 TS in an area near Hoang Sa.

After the accident, the boat headed to the Lincoln Island and Hieu sent SOS to the central Quang Ngai province Border Guard Command for help.

The Command reported the case to the provincial government, which in turn proposed the Foreign Ministry to ask for assistance from the Chinese Embassy in Vietnam.

At 14:30 pm the same day, China sent out a helicopter to the boat to take Hieu to the Lincon Island.

Communist Party magazine’s boss found dead

Today (Friday) morning, Mr. Dao Truc Thuc – editor-in-chief of the Uy Ban Kiem Tra Trung Uong (Central Review Magazine), was found dead at his office in Hanoi.

At around 8:10 am, a staff employee found 55-year-old Thuc lying dead inside his office room.

A letter was found on the table.

Thuc’s office is inside the Office of the Party Central Committee’s Commission for Inspection located at 403 B1 - 195 Doi Can Street, Ba Dinh district.

The magazine, belonging to the Party Central Committee’s Commission for Inspection, covers policies of the Communist Party and other issues related to the Party, state and people.

Police are investigating but it is suspected he committed suicide.

Jetstar offers discounts for three days

Starting Friday, February 25, Jet star Pacific, the low-cost domestic airline, will slash prices for flights departing from April 5 to 25 and May 5 to 15.

Tickets from HCMC to Hanoi/Hai Phong or Vinh will cost VND700,000 (US$35).

Flights from Hanoi to Danang, and from HCMC to Danang will drop to VND385,000 (US$20), according to the program that will last until 11.59 pm Sunday or February 28.

The tickets will be sold on the Internet at www.jetstar.com using credit cards.

The discount program is a part of the carrier’s plan to stimulate air travel, according to the airline representative.

New-style co-ops offer dramatic efficiency gains

New-style co-operatives are helping farmers increase their scale of production and improve their negotiating skills in transactions, underlining the need to widen the adoption of co-operative models in agriculture, said Tang Minh Loc, deputy head of Economic Co-operation Department, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Loc said when the co-operatives were developed, it would be easier for their members or farmers to regularly and sustainably access capital, technical knowledge and markets.

Deputy minister Ho Xuan Hung said that the development of agricultural co-operatives played a crucial role in maintaining social order and building new rural models as well as narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas.

Introduced in Viet Nam over 50 years ago, co-operatives were established on the basis of the voluntary participation of individuals, households or other legal entities that would contribute capital and labour in the interest of shared profits.

Co-operatives contributed to the country’s development.

However, the northern province of Hoa Binh’s Farmers’ Association vice chairman Nguyen Van Phan said that the operation of this economic sector faced difficulties today due to its leadership and members lacking the ability to adopt to the new market environment.

They have tended to remain passive, depending on higher level direction, and Government subsidies, Phan said.

Some farmers or those with the same jobs including bricklayers and porters have come to work together without any institutional management to establish informal or new-style co-operatives and have tapped emerging demand in localities, he said.

These voluntary economic groups, or new-style co-operatives, have existed in Viet Nam for decades and become the link among farmers, firms and scientists or for providing technical support.

Ten households, including eight poorer families in Thot Not hamlet, Tan Son Commune, in the southern province of Tra Vinh’s Tra Cu District established a group to grow rice and corn together in their merged 9.1-ha field.

The group sells their corn to a company based in the Central Highland province of Lam Dong, with each household earning VND50 million each hectare, much more than they would have earned independently. Five households have escaped poverty through the new-style co-operative’s work.

One of the group members Tran Van Nho said that working together was more effective, and allowed them to sell their products in a more professional way.

At present, about 120,000 new-style co-operatives are operating across the country while the number of traditional, is state-subsidised co-operatives numbers 15,000.

These new-style co-operatives, launched by farmers, are 32 times as effective as traditional co-operatives, said expert PhD Nguyen Dinh Huan.

However, Huan said the biggest problem that the groups faced now was their lack of legal recognition and the small-scale of operation.

The new-style co-operatives would also function better if they truly worked on the principals of democracy, voluntary effort and collective responsibility.

And it remains the case that many farmers have joined the old-style co-operatives to gain the benefits of membership, but didn’t make any effort to contribute because they have yet to benefit.

Deputy Minister Hung said that in addition to voluntary participation, the new-style co-operatives needed to have their own regulations.

Legal recognition of the new-style co-operatives is needed for the groups so that the farmers could have their own institutional organisations.

Clean water access in poor areas to be prioritised

Eighty-three per cent of the rural population has access to hygienic water, but sanitation facilities and hygienic water resources in remote and mountainous areas are still lacking, experts told a conference yesterday in Ha Noi.

About 60 per cent of rural houses had hygienic latrines, said head of the Irrigation Department Vu Van Thang. He reported the achievements accomplished concerning rural water supply and the sanitation sector during the 2006-10 period.

Some 23 per cent of households however still had no latrines, and about one-third of households had hygienic latrines which are not properly used or maintained, he added.

Providing hygienic water and sanitation facilities to households and schools in rural area across the country has been the main focus of this five-year national target programme, financially backed by international donors from Denmark, Australia, the Netherlands and the UK.

“Access to safe water is an issue that affects the poor and the better off differently,” said John Nielsen, ambassador of Denmark to Viet Nam. According to the 2008 Viet Nam Living Standard Survey, the poorest 20 per cent are five times less likely to have hygienic latrines than the richest 20 per cent.

In Viet Nam, there were about 7 million people who contract diarrhoea every year and about 20,000 children died from the malady, said UNIEF representative in Viet Nam Lotta Sylwander. “This number is very high, and having access to hygienic water is a fundamental human right,” she said.

In the next five years, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development targets to continue this project and will reach out to 62 poorest districts. By 2015, the ministry hopes that 95 per cent of the rural population will have access to hygienic water and 75 per cent of the households will have hygienic latrines.

Education Minister, VNA head ink pact

Minister of Education and Training Pham Vu Luan and General Director of Vietnam News Agency (VNA) Tran Mai Huong signed a memorandum on the implementation of a joint communication programme on education and training for the 2011-15 period in Ha Noi yesterday.

Under the programme, the two sides would co-operate on producing communication products to boost education development.

Luan, who is also a Party Central Committee member, said the ministry needed to focus on communication to achieve its goals.

“By co-operating with the news agency, the ministry hopes it can deliver the information about its activities, legal documents and information relating to the ministry’s management in an accurate and fast way,” he said.

Huong emphasised the need to keep the public informed about education and training activities in a comprehensive and timely way to better mobilise society’s resources.

Canadian education fairs to be held

Canadian Education Fairs will take place in Hanoi on March 2 and in Ho Chi Minh City on March 5 with more than 30 Canadian education institutions taking part.

The event will offer a full range of education options from kindergartens to Grade 12, college and university. Some of these institutions are the finest schools in the world.

With the vast choices of education options available, this event will also give interested students and their families the chance to question academic representatives from Canadian education institutions and Vietnamese academics who have studied in Canada.

Information on scholarship opportunities and seminars on the visa application process, as well as the different levels of education levels, will also be available.

Canada continues to be a popular destination for international students with its world-class education system, the latest technologies, competitive tuition fees, a diverse population and many scholarship opportunities.