Costa Rican to prosecute boat owners enslaving Vietnamese sailors
Asian laborers who were rescued from enslavement on Taiwanese fishing boats off Costa Rica last month
Costa Rica has announced it will prosecute the owners of two Taiwanese fishing vessels from which they rescued 36 Asian crew members, including 15 Vietnamese, from slavery last month.
The information was posted online by the Overseas Labor Administration of Vietnam’s Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, which was quoting a statement from the Vietnamese embassy in Panama on Friday.
The embassy says it has completed the procedures for repatriating the 15 Vietnamese sailors as well as six compatriots who had fled from the boats off the city of Puntarenas last May.
The six escapees had done menial work onshore until this March, when they’d asked the local authorities to get word of their and the fellows’ plight.
They said they had worked in harsh conditions on the Yulon 70 since April 14 last year.
After the complaint was lodged, police raided the two boats and rescued the enslaved Vietnamese, Indonesian, Filipino, Taiwanese and Chinese fishermen.
San Jose officials said the crewmen had been forced to work 20 hours a day, and had often been starved and beaten.
The men said they’d been promised US$250 a month in their employment contracts, of which they would keep $20 and the rest would be sent to their families, but they had received nothing.
Da Nang to build mountain side elevator
A proposal for an elevator to go up the Marble Mountains in Da Nang
The central city of Da Nang has approved plans to build an elevator into the side of the Marble Mountains to make it easier for tourists and pilgrims to visit the site.
The Marble Mountains, also know as Ngu Hanh Son, is a cluster of five mountains, each of which represents an element: Kim (metal), Thuy (water), Moc (wood), Hoa (fire) and Tho (earth). The elevator will go up Thuy Mountain, the highest of the five and where many Buddhist sanctuaries are located, local news website VietNamNet reported on Friday.
According to the proposal, the 43 meter high observation elevator will have two cabs, the sides of which will be made of glass. The project, estimated to cost nearly VND10 billion (US$527,000), will also have an emergency staircase.
The Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism said hundreds of thousands of sightseers and pilgrims visit the site every year. However, it is often difficult for children and the elderly to take the stairs to the top of Thuy Mountain.
VietNamNet said the public does not welcome the plan, fearing that it will damage the natural beauty of the mountains, which have been recognized as a national historical and cultural site since 1990.
Universities slow to reform
Universities and colleges have struggled to implement a credit-based training model set by the Government in 2005, experts said at a national seminar held yesterday.
At the seminar organised by Sai Gon University, more than 300 experts from universities and colleges throughout the country heard that only 40 universities out of a total of 407 around the country had implemented the training model.
Of these, only had completely converted all their courses to the new model.
Most experts said credit-based training was very necessary to reform tertiary education.
Dr.Le Hung Anh, a lecturer of Sai Gon University, said credit-based training would create much better learning conditions to develop students’ skills.
He said it allowed students to be more flexible in their learning as they could choose times and classes to fit their schedules and demands.
And, students had the right to choose suitable curriculums, with compulsory and optional study units, he said.
Credit-based training was first applied in the USA at the end of the 1800s. Many countries around the world including Japan, South Korea and Thailand followed suit.
In Viet Nam, credit-based training began in a small way at Can Tho University Institute before 1975. It was then introduced in some courses at HCM City University of Technology in 1993.
In the 2005-06 academic year, the ministry asked all universities and colleges in the country to apply this training by 2010.
Asso.Prof and Doctor Pham Xuan Hau, head of the Institute for Educational Research under HCM City Pedagogy University, said a rigid training syllabus full of gaps and overlaps, outdated materials and teaching methods, shortages of highly qualified lecturers and poor facilities have stalled the move to credit-based training.
Most experts said new teaching methods and better lecturing standards are needed.
Vu Dinh Bay of Hue city Pedagogy University added that many lecturers haven’t had the opportunity to update their approach to teaching and still use traditional methods. Some lecturers only focus on providing knowledge and don’t practice skills including self-learning for students, he added.
Asso.Prof and Doctor Nguyen Thanh Binh of the Institute for Educational Research under Ha Noi Pedagogy University suggested that lecturers should teach self-learning skills and time management.
Assoc. Prof and Doctor Vo Xuan Dan of HCM City University of Foreign Languages and Information Technology said that the ministry should invest more to build facilities and develop the training syllabus for the credit-based scheme.
HCM City admin reform continues
HCM City on Thursday started to streamline unnecessary administrative procedures under the municipal People’s Committee jurisdiction in the final stage of a four-year national project to reduce redtape.
Under Project 30 that started in 2007, the city’s departments, agencies and People’s Committees at all levels would have 264 administrative procedures simplified by the end of next month, said Vo Van Luan, head of the Project 30 in HCM City.
The city would have to wait for government approval to streamline over 1,500 other administrative procedures, because they did not fall within the city’s jurisdiction.
It had proposed to streamline 1,770 of the 2,504 administrative procedures that had been reviewed, Luan said.
The city would also do an inventory on newly-issued administrative procedures and the streamlining process to update on the national online database of administrative procedures, he said.
“The streamlining of unnecessary administrative procedures within the city’s jurisdiction should be implemented immediately without waiting for orders from the Government,” said Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, chairman of the Government Office.
Project 30, which aims to cut at least 30 per cent of the current administrative procedures nationwide, will be completed by the end of the year. It had three phases – inventory, review and streamline.
Eyecare project aims to help children in central Viet Nam
Orbis International signed an agreement with the central province of Thua Thien- Hue to improve eyecare and reduce rates of blindness for children in seven central provinces.
The Ministry of Health has estimated that annually between 10,000-15,000 children in the region are in need of eyecare, while 1,000 to 1,500 of that number require surgeries.
The project, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, will also establish a treatment centre for retinopathy in premature infants at Hue Central Hospital, expected to improve the vision of 500 premature newborns over the next three years.
Thirty per cent of premature infants with a birthweight of less than 2kg face a risk of blindness without timely eye examination and treatment, according to the ministry.
The30-month, US$600,000 project will also provide human resources training for the Hue Othalmology Hospital in order to turn it into one of three leading paediatric eye centres in Viet Nam.
Crash prompts probe into waterway safety
City authorities are seeking solutions, including tightened vigilance against violators of waterway regulations, after a barge crashed into Ao Ca Bridge in the city’s Thu Duc District last week.
The collision pushed the bridge upward 0.5m and left many cracks on the structure. The incident was the fourth serious accident since late 2009.
Other accidents occurred at Binh Thanh District’s Binh Loi Bridge in April, District 7’s Tan Thuan Bridge in February, and District 1’s Thi Nghe Bridge in November.
Experts said the causes of the collision were due to carelessness, barge drivers’ ignorance of waterway rules, and clearance spaces under bridges, as well as lack of warnings to drivers.
Phan Hoang Tri, deputy director of the HCM City Waterway Authority, said the waterway police had been conducting regular inspections to fine barges anchoring inside the safety zone set to protect bridges.
However, the city lacked a sufficient number of inspectors to do the work everywhere in the city, he said.
“Boat clearance spaces under many bridges are not realistic,” Tri said.
The city’s regulations categorise the clearance space into six levels, with level one requiring a height of 10m and level six requiring 2.5m.
Existing spaces under Thi Nghe and Binh Loi bridges were smaller than allowed, Tri said.
Many big-capacity waterway vehicles that travel to and from neighbouring provinces of Tay Ninh, Binh Duong and Binh Phuoc run on the Sai Gon River under the Binh Loi Bridge every day.
The only way to solve the problem is to build new bridges.
“Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe Canal, for example, has dozens of small bridges, but replacing old with new ones costs no less than VND100 million [US$5,200] each,” he said.
Tri said the waterway authority had recommended that the Viet Nam Railway Administration replace the existing Binh Loi Bridge, but has yet to reply.
Col Nguyen Van Xinh, head of HCM City’s Waterway Traffic Division, said he had asked railway authorities to assign staff to guide traffic for water transport under the bridge, but no reply had been received.
Xinh said fines had yet to be levied on the barges that hit Thi Nghe and Binh Loi bridges because his office was waiting for damage assessment reports.
Boy dies after drinking herbal concotion
A six-year-old boy from central Nghe An Province’s Quynh Chau District died after being poisoned last Thursday.
Lu Van Ca drank a concoction of poisonous roots and leaves.
According to Doctor Nguyen Van Nam, a paediatrician from Nghe An Hospital, Ca had been suffering from a cold so his family had taken him to a quack doctor who prescribed him a broth made from unknown leaves and roots.
Nam said the situation was common among ethnic minorities and added that information should be provided to local people to avoid a repeat of the accident.
Positive signs in labour market
The labour market showed positive signs in the first quarter despite the long Tet break, recruitment company VietnamWorks.com said in a report released on Monday.
The Online Employment Indicator Report said while demand decreased by 6.5 per cent from the previous quarter, supply rose 14.1 per cent.
“The labour demand decreased 20 per cent during the same period last year,” Chris Harvey, general director of VietnamWorks.com, said.
“The development of online recruitment this year was beyond our expectation with a slight decrease in terms of the labour demand, showing positive signs given the very long Tet holidays.”
During the downturn, people were reluctant to leave the security of their jobs to try something new, he pointed out. The increase in the labour supply shows that people have become more confident as the economy improves, he said.
“They are taking action on their desire to move up to better jobs. We believe that an improving economy will increase employers’ demand and creates new opportunities for job-seekers. Employers know that finding the right new people will give them a competitive advantage and help them to grow their businesses.”
Sales had the smallest demand-supply gap and, as a result, Harvey said, “Employers had to compete very hard to get talent for their sales force than for any other function in their organisations.”
Despite the aggressive growth rate of labour demand (18 per cent) in banking this quarter, the gap in labour demand – supply was the biggest, making this industry the hardest for job-seekers to find a job.
Sales, accounting/finance, administrative/clerical, IT-software, and marketing were the areas with the highest demand for workers.
In terms of labour supply, the top five areas were accounting/finance, administrative/clerical, human resource, sales, and customer service.
The top five industries in the demand list were civil/construction, accounting/auditing, banking, electrical/electronics, and airlines/tourism/hotel.
Banking topped the supply list.
Fines increased for chopping down trees
Individuals or organisations would be fined between VND10-15 million (US$530-795) for removing or cutting trees in Ha Noi under a new regulation.
Under a by-law on tree management issued recently by the city’s People’s Committee, violators would also have to pay for regrowing the illegally cut trees.
The same punishment would also apply to planting trees which violated city regulations, such as planting trees near pavements and in streets where the action was prohibited, or planting prohibited trees.
Volunteers register to donate corneas
More than 800 people in Da Nang have signed up as cornea donors upon their deaths, according to the city’s Red Cross office.
According to the city’s Eye Hospital, 3,000 to 5,000 patients need cornea transplants at the hospital each year.
23,000 workers go overseas this year
More than 23,000 workers had gone to work aboard since early this year, the Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs’ overseas labour management department said.
Of the figure, more than 6,000 workers were sent aboard in April, the figures showed.
They mainly went to work in Taiwan, Malaysia, Middle East, Japan and South Korea.
The department urged labour export enterprises to focus on new markets with higher salaries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Hundreds of children struck by viral fever
The number of children currently suffering from viral fever in Ha Noi has risen sharply, according to Associate Professor Nguyen Tien Dung, head of Bach Mai Hospital Paediatrics Department.
“About one-third of 100-200 children hospitalised daily are suffering from viral fever”, said Dung.
The same situation is repeated at the Central Paediatric Hospital. Some 600 of the 1,800-2,000 children that visited the hospital every day were diagnosed as suffering from viral fever, said a doctor from the hospital’s Digestive Department.
Viral fever often appears around this time of year, but has been amplified by the recent heat wave. The infection caused by viruses affects the respiratory and digestive systems, and therefore it can spread widely and quickly and may affect any age group.
The symptoms of the infection are headaches, sneezing and coughing, diarrhoea and a high or light fever that can last from one or two days to as long as a week depending on the constitution of the infected people.
While there is no special drugs to treat the infection, doctors say patients can take antipyretics to reduce the fever, rest and drink more water.
Parents are being advised to bring their children to the hospital as soon as possible if they exhibit any other symptoms apart from fever.
To prevent the infection, parents should not expose their children to high temperatures from 11am to 3pm and avoid crowded areas.
Dong Nai gets solar traffic lights
The southern province of Dong Nai has installed 76 traffic lights using solar energy.
Duong Danh Quy, head of the province’s Traffic Safety Committee said the province was the first in the country to use solar panels to supply power for traffic lights.
“During the trial, the traffic lights were as reliable as traffic lights wired to the power supply and constituted a valuable energy saving for Bien Hoa City,” he said.
The plan was initiated in 2007 by the committee and piloted in several places around the city.
The solar powered posts have been installed on national highways 1A, 51, 20 in the province and on some city streets.
Quy said the posts have capacity to store enough power for two days’ operation and they are easy to install, because they require no excavation of the road surface.
The cost for a post is around VND120 million (US$6,282), taken from the committee’s fund from traffic fines.
Quy said solar powered posts would replace all public grid wired posts in the near future. He called for other provinces to follow Dong Nai’s model.
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