The Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City (VNUHCM) is teaming up with local authorities to protect students against the muggers and thieves who frequent the campus.

Students walk past the signs of normal business and daily life on the “campus” of the Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Thu Duc University Village.

The committee’s main task will be to enforce campus patrols but it will also direct a campaign to improve cooking safety and combat pollution in the university grounds, where many private homes are still standing and occupied, along with private businesses.

“The campaign will be conducted within the next two months and continued later,” VNU-HCM Director Phan Thanh Binh said at the conference.

“We will introduce better services for students and launch personal security awareness campaigns for the benefit of students and other residents,” Binh said.

The promise of action follows a deluge of complaints about the worsening crime on campus as well as the food stalls where the students buy their meals.

“Students here very often have their bikes, handbags, mobile phones, money and laptops stolen,” said Nguyen Khac Canh, head of VNUHCM’s department of student affairs.

Officials conceded that the campus security guards had failed to deal with the increasingly sophisticated thieves, but observed that students were often guilty of downright senselessness when it came to keeping out of trouble.

“We often catch couples who sneak off to lonely corners at night despite the warning notices,” said senior police officer Tran Thanh Nhon of Di An District. “Although maintaining security is the local authorities’ responsibility, the students are supposed to look out for themselves too.”

Some 25,000 students live on the campus of VNU-HCMC, also known as Thu Duc University Village.

Since the dorms can only accommodate 8,000 students, the vast majority rent rooms in the many private homes that are still standing in the university grounds even though their occupants were meant to be relocated ages ago to make way for a modern university complex.

These unresolved shortcomings in site clearance came in for heavy criticism at the conference, where they got much of the blame for the messy situation on campus.

It was back in 1995 that the central government zoned the area for occupation solely by VNU-HCM.

In 2003, it approved a massive VND6.8 trillion (about US$384 million) project to turn the zoned area into a 644-hectare campus by 2013.

Since then, 90 percent of the land has been cleared, according to a report by the government of Binh Duong, where 522 hectares of the zoned area is located (the rest is in Thu Duc).

The project’s management board told the conference that the remaining families were refusing to move as the offers of compensation were unacceptable and they could make VND10 million ($564.91) a month from renting rooms to students anyway.

In response, Tran Thi Kim Van, vice chairwoman of the Binh Duong Province People’s Committee, promised more progress with site clearance.

Binh of VNU-HCM said it would take two more years to clear the site completely. In the meantime, he suggested construction could begin on the land already cleared.

VNU-HCM houses the universities of Social Sciences and Humanities, Natural Sciences, Technology, and Information Technology as well as the International University and the Faculty of Economics, along with several research institutes.

VietNamNet/TN