Girl dies from electrocution at ATM in Vietnam; Draft on Vietnam’s 2010 Millennium Goals released; Customs equipped with container scanners; $3.4 mil project to aid victims of child labor

Local leaders, religious officials and monks attended the ceremony and prayed for those martyred in war.

Thousands of people gathered on the bridge and banks along the Ma river and leased 15,000 of the candle lights on the river, showing their gratitude to the soldiers who died for national liberation and independence.

Hai Phong man gets 17 years for having colleague killed

The Hanoi People’s Court on Wednesday handed out a 17-year jail term to a man found guilty of having his colleague killed almost three years ago.

The colleague, Nguyen Van Soi, had angered Dong Xuan Phuong, 35, by taking a photograph of the latter drinking and giving it to their boss at the 204 Construction Joint Stock Company under Bach Dang Construction Corporation in Hai Phong City.

When Phuong, who is from Hai Phong, was reprimanded by the company, he decided to teach Soi a lesson by having him beaten up by two locals Doan Duc Lan and Hoang Ngoc Manh.

In July 2007, Manh arranged to meet Soi in Hanoi. During the meeting, he slashed Soi’s thigh twice with a knife, severing an artery. Soi succumbed to his injuries.

The case was tried in November 2008, when the Hanoi People’s Court had sentenced Phuong to the same 17 years in prison. However, the defendant and the victim’s family had appealed the decision, following which the Supreme People’s Court had asked for the case to be investigated afresh and retried.

Phuong had told the police he didn’t anticipate Manh would act “that excessively.”

The Hanoi People’s Court said it found no reason to change its verdict after reviewing the case thoroughly.

Manh and Lan are still at large, and the police have put out a warrant for them.

Company to take labor refund dispute to court

A Hanoi-based company on Wednesday said it would bring to court disputes with 18 laborers over refunds demanded by the latter for alleged breach of labor export contracts.

Bui Hai Hoa, director general of Petromanning Company, a subsidiary of PetroVietnam, said the move was planned as the laborers didn’t agree with the offered refund of VND70.2 million (US$3,679) each, including airfares each.

It was the highest “support” that the company could pay as ordered by PetroVietnam’s leaders and in accordance with the contracts, he said.

“We showed our goodwill, but the workers didn’t agree. So, the last solution will be to bring the case to court and settle the dispute,” Hoa said.

The company had offered to pay VND43.2 million each, not including airfares, when the workers gathered in front of its headquarters in Hanoi on Thursday, demanding that it pay back fees of VND99.07 million each.

The workers refused to accept the company’s offer and sent their appeal to the Overseas Labor Administration at the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs.

They said they were sent to Romania last November under a five-year contract with Petromanning to work as laborers on construction projects for 1.85 euros an hour for eight hours of work a day.

However, they were only assigned to do some minor repair work at apartment buildings for just 15 days a month for three months during which they were not paid either their salary or the extra payment promised for no-work days.

When the laborers protested, Petromanning’s Romanian partner, E.R.C Development S.R.LA, sent them to work as garbage collectors.

Not agreeing with the change, they turned to Vietnamese Embassy in Romania for help and demanded that Petromanning send them home.

Hoa argued that the Romanian company had to be held responsible for dealing with financial matters for the laborers, adding that Petromanning had sent proposals to Romanian Embassy in Vietnam and Vietnamese Embassy in Romania for cooperative solutions to the case.

Meanwhile, another 16 laborers in Romania were also going to return because their employer didn’t give them work as contracted, Hoa said.

They would receive the same support as the 18 workers who returned earlier, he added.

$3.4 mil project to aid victims of child labor

The labor ministry on Monday launched a four-year, 2.5 million euro (US$3.4 million) project that will provide educational services to around 5,000 child workers engaged in or at risk of engaging in child labor in the country.

The project, implemented in cooperation with international agencies, will also train 300 teachers, providing them with child protection knowledge and skills.

The National Program on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor will also help some 200 child victims of human trafficking integrate into the community.

The project will be implemented in Hanoi, the northern provinces of Lao Cai and Ninh Binh, the central province of Quang Nam, and the southern province of Dong Nai.

Nguyen Thanh Hoa, Deputy Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, quoted reports last year as saying between 25,000-27,000 children were working under dangerous, toxic and harsh conditions nationwide.

MoLISA has initiated the new project in collaboration with Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (Spanish Agency of International Development Cooperation) and the International Labor Organization.

Longer jail term sought for killer driver

Ho Chi Minh City prosecutors on Monday appealed for a longer jail term for a truck driver who killed a teenaged girl by driving over her three times, local Vietnamnet reported Monday.

Dang Huu Anh Tuan, 25, from the south central province of Binh Thuan was last week sentenced to eight years in prison for manslaughter.

At the trial last Wednesday, Tuan was also asked to pay VND75 million (US$4,000) in compensation to the family of 17-year-old Nguyen Thi Hoi.

On the night of May 14, 2008, Tuan was driving a container truck when he hit Hoi’s motorbike on Luy Ban Bich Street, Tan Phu District, before running over her legs, according to the indictment.

Hoi cried out for help and passersby asked Tuan to back the car for them to pull her out, but Tuan continued to drive forward, running over Hoi again.

Tuan then backed the car and ran over the girl a third time, the indictment said.

He was apprehended by locals as he tried to run away.

Hoi succumbed to her injuries at a local hospital.

HCMC prosecutors before the first trial had suggested a jail term of 11-12 years but judges said Tuan had a good record and had paid part of the compensation to the victim’s family.

Tuan had told the court that he had panicked and tried to escape after he hit the girl the first time.

Girl dies from electrocution at ATM in Vietnam

A 12-year-old schoolgirl was killed by an electrocution at a Ho Chi Minh City ATM Thursday afternoon.

Investigations by police in District 1, where the accident took place, found an electric wire running across a set of stairs where Chau Linh Uyen sat outside the ATM room.

The wire ran from the ATM room to the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank) located behind it.

According to Saigon Electricity Company technicians, the wire, which was set up by Agribank to provide electricity for the room, had many open joints and was leaking electricity.

Witnesses said Uyen, a student from Nguyen Thai Binh Primary School, visited the ATM on Nguyen Thai Binh Street as she walked home from school.

She then played with some friends in front of the room housing the machine. But she suddenly fainted and began foaming at the mouth when she sat on the stairs, witnesses said.

Eyewitness Pham Thanh Dung said they thought she had a seizure and applied various first aid techniques.

While Dung and Uyen’s friends were attending to the fallen girl, one of them experienced an electric shock when she touched the stairs.

Dung said they then suspected an electric shock had caused Uyen’s condition.

They rushed the girl to Saigon Hospital, where she was declared dead before even entering the facility.

Vu Minh Tan, deputy director general of Agribank, said the bank had paid all the fees for the girl’s funeral.

“If the police investigation concludes that it was our bank’s fault, we are ready to take responsibility in accordance with law,” he said.

New ways discussed to handle domestic violence

A training workshop on preventing domestic violence opened in Hanoi on April 2 for staff of the Centre for Studies and Applied Sciences in Gender – Families – Women and Adolescents (CSAGA), who will disseminate the knowledge across the country.

The five-day workshop is part of a Swedish-sponsored project on encouraging men to participate in the prevention of domestic violence in Vietnam.

Addressing the first working day, Elsa Hastad, Deputy Head of Development Cooperation and Coordinator for Democracy and Human Rights of the Swedish Embassy, praised Vietnam’s legal mechanism in the area, which was marked by the adoption of the Law on Domestic Violence in 2007.

“The Vietnamese legislation is quite far developed,” Hastad said. “Although it is quite new, about two years now, it actually criminalises physical abuse and psychological abuse, which was not in place before and that is quite a good piece of legislation.”

However, she said legislation is not enough to root out domestic violence. To do so, she emphasised, there must be a concerted effort among agencies from multiple branches of government, from the legislative to the executive.

More needs to be done to improve public awareness, especially among children, through, for example, incorporating the teaching of gender equality into school curricula at the kindergarten or primary levels, she added.

During the next four days, trainees will learn methods used in Sweden and other countries to engage boys and men in advocating gender equality and preventing domestic violence, as well as learning consulting skills for dealing with men who have committed domestic violence.

Instead of taking a conventional approach, which often looks at women as victims and the men who are perpetrators as criminals, the workshop considers men who resort to violence as those in need of help.

According to lecturer Vidar Vetterfalk, a psychologist working for “Men for Equality” – a Swedish non-government organisation–when faced with family conflict, men tend to react with anger and fear that everything is spinning out of their control. This situation is compounded by the fact that men grow up with “deep-rooted values and attitudes” towards women that were passed from generation to generation.

Therefore, he added, they need help and communication so they don’t take recourse to violence as a solution.

Through exchanges of practical experience and knowledge from other countries, trainees are expected to develop their own solutions that fit into the Vietnamese context and provide the best strategies to put a stop to domestic violence in Vietnam.

Toxicity tests on cooking containers

The Ministry of Health has announced that it will test samples of all disposable plastic food containers for toxic substances.

Nguyen Cong Khan, head of the Food Safety and Hygiene Department under the ministry, said that it had asked the National Institute for Testing Food Hygiene and Safety to take dozens of samples of disposable food containers from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the two biggest markets in Vietnam, for testing starting at the beginning of this week.

Aside from these samples, the department also asked authorities to examine disposable food containers from border gates and local plastics manufacturers. No toxic substances had yet been found in the items, said Khan.

The inspection is the result of information that some Chinese disposable plastic food containers are contaminated with toxic substances and may cause cancer. The containers are also popular in Vietnam.

Professor Hoang Ngoc Cuong from the HCM City Natural Science University said that the main ingredient in disposable plastic food containers is polystyrene, which is proven to be safe.

However, consumers should not heat these food containers because the polymer can melt and become harmful.

Khan said that since 2001, the ministry has regulated all food containers, which are subject to regular examination by authorities. The department has asked local authorities to keep boosting inspections on the containers.

Project to support labour relations begins

On April 2, the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) officially started a project to support labour relations and revise the Labour Code.

The US$2 million project funded by the “One UN” organisation will be implemented over a period of two years with the aim of helping Vietnam deal with labour-related issues such as revising its Labour Code and promoting healthy labour relations between ministries, sectors and localities.

The project is based on a national cooperation framework of steady job promotion in Vietnam in the 2006-2010 period, signed by the Vietnamese Government and the ILO, and a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the 2008-2001 period between the Asia Pacific ILO Office and MOLISA.

Draft on Vietnam’s 2010 Millennium Goals released

A workshop on Vietnam’s 2010 Millennium Goals was jointly organised by the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Hanoi on April 2.

Participants agreed on a draft which prioritised poverty reduction, compulsory primary education, improvement of gender equality, and enhancing the status of women, and mapped out remedies for these problems.

Vietnam has completed about two-thirds of a 10-year socio-economic development strategy (2000-2010) and two 5-year plans (2001-2005 and 2006-2010).

The United Nations will organise a summit this year to review the 10-year implementation of Millennium Goals and call for the ratification of international commitments on environment and climate change.

Vietnam customs equipped with container scanners

A container scanning system worth US$9.6 million was put into operation at the Cat Lai port on April 2, the fist scanner to be used by Vietnam’s Customs Department.

Designed by the American L3 Communication Agency and funded by the Japanese Government, the scanner’s main components are manufactured in the US, the UK, and Japan.

The scanner will help customs officials detect products which do not match shipping manifests and reduce smuggling, trade fraud and illegal transporting of products.

Cat Lai, one of Vietnam’s biggest container ports, handles 45 percent of the country’s total port container traffic.

PV