Hanoi police bust contraband cigarette racket; World Bank provides $160 mil for Vietnam urban upgrade; Eye doctor arrested for intentionally transmitting HIV; Police seize tonnes of illegal books

Police in Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem District raided a large unlicensed tobacco shop situated on Hang Hanh and Bao Khanh Streets on September 10 and seized more than 2000 packs of contraband cigarettes.

The police also caught some people selling smuggled foreign cigarettes on the same streets and seized more than 300 packs. They detained Nguyen Bich Hanh, Pham Kim Hanh, and Duong Thi Hien, all residents of the capital.

They found a further 700 foreign packs and 900 packs of locally-made cigarettes hidden in trees and lamp-posts.

The sellers used empty packs for customers to identify while stashing away cigarettes elsewhere, bringing them only once deals were done.

The police are investigating.

World Bank provides $160 mil for Vietnam urban upgrade

The State Bank of Vietnam and the World Bank signed a US$160 million additional credit agreement on September 10 for financing an urban upgrade project carried on simultaneously in Can Tho and Hai Phong cities, Nam Dinh province, and Ho Chi Minh City.

HCM City’s Tan Hoa-Lo Gom Canal, which is clogged by household refuse. With a grant from the World Bank, the city hopes to complete a project to clean it.

The grant will help ease the impact of high construction-material prices and a shortage of funds.

Of the amount, $128.8 million is meant for HCM City, $11.2 million for Can Tho, $10.45 million for Hai Phong, and $9.15 million for Nam Dinh, the central bank said.

The project, which was begun in 2004 with an initial World Bank loan of $222.5 million, seeks to eliminate poverty in the four localities by improving living conditions for low-income people.

It has helped upgrade infrastructure, provide houses to the poor, and set up a fund for lending to low-income people to buy houses.

The grant marks the completion of financing by the World Bank to Vietnam in 2009 when it signed 10 credit agreements worth nearly $1.5 billion.

Eye doctor arrested for intentionally transmitting HIV

A doctor from Ho Chi Minh City’s District 8 Medical Contingency Center was arrested for intentionally infecting a security guard with HIV.

The incident occurred when the security guard had reportedly stopped the doctor for causing a fight.

Dang The He, director of the enter, said September 10 that he terminated the working contract with eye doctor Le Thanh Tin, 36, for allegedly disturbing public order and violating the center’s regulations.

On August 9, Le Thanh Tin went to work at District 8’s Ward 3 Medical Center and was said to have hit Nguyen Thi Thuy Bay, 48, the center’s odd-job woman, because she opened the door slowly.

When the security guard, Nguyen Ha Vinh Phuc, 34, and police asked him to go to the police station, the doctor injected Phuc with blood suspected being contaminated HIV.

At the police station, Tin presented blood test result which said he was positive for the HIV virus. He said he had contracted it while working.

EC presents training equipment to tourism schools

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) and the European Committee (EC) granted equipment worth over EUR 572,000 to nine tourism training schools nationwide at a ceremony in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong on Sept. 10.

As part of a project to develop Vietnamese human resources, 300 pieces of equipment were provided to tourism colleges to serve four types of training, including room service, reception, restaurant operations and cooking processing.

MCST Deputy Minister Tran Chien Thang said that the non-refundable provision of equipment to will help tourism schools increase the quantity and quality of human resources, meeting the demands of the tourism sector’s development.

The Vietnamese human resource development project is being implemented with a total investment of EUR12 million among which the EC contributed EUR 10.8 million.

The project focuses on strengthening the capacity of the tourism sector, completing a set of standardised tourism skills and training in tourism management..

Police seize tonnes of illegal books

More than 3.5 tonnes of illegally printed books were found and seized in Nguyen Thi Thanh’s workshop at the February 3 building in Phuong Mai Ward in Dong Da District last week.

The workshop was operating without a licence and had been warned by the authorities many times, said Le Quan, deputy head of Dong Da District’s Security Police Team.

Thanh violated regulations on storing and publishing illegally printed products in excess of 500 copies, said Quan.

Man arrested for selling monkeys

Hoang Viet Luat, 51, a resident of Thuoc Long District, was nabbed yesterday for trafficking two monkeys and two black-shanked douc monkeys.

Police found and seized a large number of wild animals including one crested argus, four bamboo rats, one weasel and a wildcat.

Luat admitted to the police from the Forest Protection Division of Bu Gia Map National Park in Phuoc Long District to trading, trafficking and storing wild animals.

Megalitres of water down the drain

Broken pipes at No 48 Tran Phu Street in Nha Trang City in central Khanh Hoa Province resulted in the loss of thousands of cubic metres of clean water yesterday morning, said Nguyen Van Dam, head of the Khanh Hoa Water Supply Co’s Technical Department.

The cause was initially attributed to the age of the pipes, which were under high pressure and were installed before 2000, said Dam.

Korean found dead behind block of flats

A South Korean man named Choi Soo Chul, 39, was found dead behind Bloc B4 in Hoang Anh Gia Lai Building on Tran Xuan Soan street in HCM City’s District 7 early Wednesday morning.

The local police said that no injures were found on his body. Choi and three other South Korean men rented an apartment on the 11th floor of the bloc for a couple months.

An investigation is underway.

Pellet bomb kills son, injures father

A 15-year-old-boy was killed and his father seriously injured when a bomb exploded in their rice field in the central province of Ha Tinh’s Duc Tho District on Tuesday.

Dinh Huu Thong and his son were digging a pond in their rice field in front of their house in Duc Tho Commune on Tuesday morning when one of their spades struck the bomb.

The explosion killed the boy on the spot and injured Thong seriously.

PV