VN News (Mar. 15-16,1997)

[vuca@envi.env.civil.saitama-u.ac.jp (Vu Thanh Ca)]

Mar 16: Tourists easy prey for thieves in Vietnam  
Mar 16: Ho Chi Minh City karaoke disco gutted by fire 
Mar 16: Vietnam warns China to stop drilling near Spratlys
Mar 15: Vietnam-health : Ho Chi Minh City lacks hospitals 
Mar 15: Vietnam Says China Oil Rig Violateing Its Waters 
Mar 15: Cambodia PM Says He May Nullify All Treaties With Vietnam 
Mar 15: Vietnam mulls cut in working week

Sunday - Mar 16, 1997

Tourists easy prey for thieves in Vietnam 

By Pascale Trouillaud  

HO CHI MINH CITY  (AFP) - Foreign tourists and businessmen say 
they are increasingly falling prey to thieves in this southern 
Vietnamese city and claim local police are ill-prepared to tackle 
the problem. 

Crimes -- especially robberies -- are carried out daily
against foreign visitors and business people here. 
 
You walk out of a restaurant to enjoy a gentle evening
stroll along the former Catinat Street in old Saigon. You
hear the sudden revving of a motor-scooter nearby and the
next thing you know your purse is stolen. 

You are left standing stunned on the sidewalk, maybe
injured.  

Last week, the wife of a French bank executive fell victim
to a purse-snatcher who left her with a broken nose and
fractured kneecap, injuries that forced her to return home. 

Police in the bustling southern Vietnamese city refused to
comment or provide any figures on the apparent rise in
crime against foreigners or say what measures may be taken
to combat it. 

But over the past two years stories like these have been
frequently cited in the local press and become common among
foreigners here, particularly those who frequent Ho Chi
Minh City's main streets around the Majestic, Continental
and Rex hotels. 

"Right now, we have a feeling of insecurity. You must
always keep an eye on a person who approaches near you,"
said one French woman, who lost two gold necklaces in plain
daylight to a thief perched on the back of a fast-moving
scooter.  

On Dong Khoi Street, young thieves aged 17 to 22 years use
scooters to take advantage of speed and surprise to snatch
belongings from their victims.  

On Le Loi and Nguyen Hue boulevards, teenagers block the
sidewalks while accomplices carefully sneak nimble fingers
into pockets to empty them. > 

An alert tourist can hang on tight to a camera but will
likely find at the end of a tour that his sunglasses or a
few dollars are missing. 

The most sought after objects are mobile phones which can
be sold on the black market. 

Observers say one motive for the thefts could be drugs with
a heroin addiction costing about 300 dollars a day. 

"At first they take money from their parents, then from
their neighbours, then from tourists," said one Vietnamese
woman, adding that "when under the influence of heroin they
are not afraid to ride a motor-scooter to steal." 

The police seem to be passive in face of the problem, with
none seen on the most targetted streets while Vietnamese as
well as foreigners are becoming victims of petty crimes. 

"They are totally ill-equipped in terms of having enough
vehicles and mobile phones," the woman said, adding that
"they often know the thieves and have files on them." 

In most cases, reporting incidents to police here yields
neither arrests, nor the retrieval of stolen goods.

In contrast such crimes are a rarity in capital Hanoi.

"But in Saigon, with a quick rise in the standard of
living, young people have higher expectations. They want
scooters, portable phones and drugs," the Vietnamese woman
said, adding that symbols of wealth shown off by foreigners
is often too much of a temptation.  

In the former Saigon, where 5.5 million people live, many
young people have no homes or work and are left to wander
the streets. But like everybody else enjoying Vietnam's
new-found wealth with the opening of the economy they also want 
to go to the stylish discotheques and restaurants. 


Sunday - Mar 16, 1997

Ho Chi Minh City karaoke disco gutted by fire 

HANOI  (AFP) - One of the most luxurious karaoke
discotheques in Ho Chi Minh City has been destroyed by
fire, a report said Sunday. 

Shangri-la karaoke discotheque in the centre of Vietnam's
largest city was gutted after the fire started last Friday,
the official Nhan Dan daily said. 

It took firefighters nearly five hours to put out the blaze
which destroyed all 19 karaoke salons of the discotheque,
the daily newspaper said. However, no-one died in the fire,
whose cause is as yet unclear. 

Total damage has been estimated at around 300,000 dollars.


Sunday - Mar 16, 1997 

Vietnam warns China to stop drilling near Spratlys 

Hanoi (Reuter) - Vietnam has called on Beijing to stop drilling for oil close to
the disputed Spratly islands, and its coastguards have sent repeated warnings to
Chinese vessels nearby, the official Vietnam News Agency said on Sunday.


In an unusual disclosure of tension between the two communist countries, VNA
published extracts from a sternly worded letter lodged with the Chinese
embassy in Hanoi on March 10.

``The operation of the Chinese oil rig has seriously violated Vietnam's
sovereignty over its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf,'' the
letter said.

``Vietnam demands the Chinese side stop the operation of the Kan Tan III oil
rig and withdraw it from the exclusive zone and the continental shelf of
Vietnam.''

VNA said the oil rig, tugboat and accompanying vessels moved on March 7 into
a South China Sea area 64.5 nautical miles off Chan Nay Dong cape, halfway
down the Vietnamese coast.

The area is close to the potentially oil-rich Spratly Islands chain, of
which China and Vietnam are among six regional claimants.

VNA said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs arranged hasty meetings with
Chinese officials after the rig started drilling and coastguards made
repeated warnings to accompanying vessels.

``But Chinese ships ignored the warning and kept on drilling operations,''
it said.

The protest brings a festering dispute between the two countries over
maritime sovereignty out into the open after several years of careful
manoeuvring to settle the issue through peaceful negotiation.

Warships from the two countries clashed briefly in the Spratlys in the late
1980s.

But the two sides set up working groups to thrash out competing land and sea
border disputes -- which include competing claims for the Paracel Islands
archipelago -- after they normalised relations in 1991.

The problem bubbled to the surface again last year when Hanoi granted an oil
exploration and production contract near the Spratlys to the U.S. firm
Conoco Inc, a unit of Dupont Co.

A month later, China announced that it was expanding the area of sea under
its jurisdiction by more than 2.5 million sq km (965,000 sq miles), and said
the move ensured it abided by a United Nations convention on maritime law.

Vietnam and China, although ideological allies, have a long history of
mutual suspicion.

Hanoi gave a low-key reaction last month to the death of China's paramount
leader Deng Xiaoping, who launched a war to ``teach Vietnam a lesson'' for
its 1978 invasion of Cambodia.

That conflict sparked a period of border hostilities lasting through much of
the next decade.

Privately, Vietnamese officials said there was concern in Hanoi that the
Chinese military would use Deng's death as an opportunity to flex its
muscles, perhaps in an offensive on the Spratlys issue.

Saturday - Mar 15, 1997 

Vietnam-health : Ho Chi Minh City lacks hospitals 

HANOI  (AFP) - Ho Chi Minh City in southern
Vietnam is facing an acute shortage of hospitals and the
demand for health care is growing apace, a Vietnam News
Agency daily said Saturday. 

Courrier du Vietnam said 500,000 patients are admitted each
year to hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, and
that up to 30 percent of them are forced to share their
beds.

Cho Ray hospital, the city's biggest, had 40,000 patients
last year and faces acute shortage of beds in many
sections, the report said.

The city has 10,000 hospital beds and 20,000 doctors or
nurses for its 5.5 million population.

Those who can afford it are forced to seek treatment at
private clinics whose service is of dubious quality given
their lack of personnel and equipment.

The pressure on health care is set to build up further as
public hospitals are set to grow at between 25 percent and
35 percent over the next ten years while the number of
patients grows at 20 percent annually, official projections
show.

Foreign investment has been sought but few hospital
projects are currently being discussed.

Saturday - Mar 15, 1997 

Vietnam Says China Oil Rig Violateing Its Waters

Hanoi (DJ) -- Vietnam accused China Saturday of violating its waters in the 
South China Sea and demanded the immediate removal of a Chinese exploratory
oil rig.

Vietnam has repeatedly accused China of incursions into Vietnamese waters
in parts of the contested sea, where potential oil fields have raised the stakes
for control of the region.

'These acts by the Chinese side are serious violations of Vietnam's special
economic zone and its continental shelf,' the Foreign Mininister spokeman said.


Saturday - Mar 15, 1997 

 Cambodia PM Says He May Nullify All Treaties With Vietnam 

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Cambodia's Second Prime Minister Hun Sen said Saturday
he is willing to cancel all his country's treaties with neighboring Vietnam 
to prove he is not dependent upon Hanoi.

Hun Sen, a former member of the communist Khmer Rouge, is battling accusations 
from political rivals that he ceded Cambodian land to the Vietnamese in
exchange 
for being installed as prime minister after Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979.

He was prime minister during a decade-long Vietnamese occupation, and became 
the second prime minister in the coalition government in 1993 following national
 elections supervised by the United Nations.

In his Saturday radio speech, Hun Sen rejected the accusations, declaring
that he was 'ready to delete all treaties which I have signed in the past
with Vietnam if necessary to stop the accusations.'

Hun Sen and his formerly communist Cambodian People's Party plan to 
participate in national elections in 1998.

Saturday - Mar 15, 1997 

 Vietnam mulls cut in working week

Hanoi (Reuter) -- Vietnam is studying a proposal to cut the working week to five
and a half days from six to give labourers more leisure time, improve
productivity 
and create badly needed jobs, a government official said on Saturday.

Hoang Van Hung, vice-director of the Labour Protection Department, said a 
shorter week could be implemented on a trial basis before changes are made to
the 1994 Labour Code, which stipulates a 48-hour, six-day week.

``It's too early and extremely optimistic to say that from May 1 we can 
have Saturday afternoons off,'' he said, referring to a report that the study 
would be completed by that date.

Proponents of the shorter working week argue that it could help chip away at 
unemployment.

The official daily Vietnam News said that the national jobless rate among
people of working age is currently 5.65 percent and 5.55 percent in 
urban areas.