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VN news/business news (Mar 28-29, 1997)
Thai Prime Minister to boost economic ties on visit with Vietnam
Vietnam police officer killed by suspected burglar
Labour abuse charge at Vietnam Nike plants refuted
Malaysia and Vietnam to jointly operate oilfield
Nearly 300 labour fatalities in Vietnam in 1996: report
Capitalism overruns Ho Chi Minh City Sound of chirping birds replaced
by jackhammers
Saturday - Mar 29, 1997 [41]... Back to headlines
_[INLINE] Thai Prime Minister to boost economic ties on visit with
Vietnam_
HANOI (AFP) - Thai Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh begins a
two-day visit to Vietnam on Sunday aimed at bolstering Thailand's
economic presence and resolving bilateral fishing disputes.
He will hold a one-on-one meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart Vo
Van Kiet, and plans to visit Communist Party General Secretary Do Muoi
on Sunday.
The prime minister, who is leading a 42-strong delegation, will be
accompanied by foreign minister Prachuab Chaiyasarn and officials from
ministries of defence, commerce and agriculture.
Talks are expected to focus on a longstanding fishing dispute in the
Gulf of Thailand which has seen fishermen from both countries
periodically arrested for fishing in the other country's waters.
The two leaders are expected to agree on a new approach to resolve
fishing issues, sources said.
Chavalit's high profile visit is also expected to help boost Thai
investment here. Thailand currently ranks ninth among foreign
investors, with more than one billion dollars in approved investments
since 1988.
Thai investors will be looking at Vietnam as a possible offshore
manufacturing location as part of a regional strategy. Vietnam joined
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 1995, and has committed
to meeting the Asean Free Trade Area requirements by 2005.
Chavalit is also expected to brief Hanoi on the progress of
naturalization of stateless first generation Thai-Vietnamese living in
Thailand. This group of children and grandchildren of refugees who
fled Vietnam after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 number
over 34,000.
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Saturday - Mar 29, 1997 [42]... Back to headlines
_[INLINE] Vietnam police officer killed by suspected burglar_
Hanoi (Reuter) - An unarmed police officer was stabbed to death in
Vietnam when he tried to arrest a man suspected of burglary, police in
the northern port town of Haiphong said on Saturday.
A senior police officer said that Le Duc Quang, 28, plunged a 40-cm
(15.75-inch) knife into the 41-year-old police captain's chest and
stomach after a brief struggle on Thursday afternoon.
The captain, Le Thanh A, gave chase as Quang ran off but soon fell to
the ground. He died on the way to hospital.
Quang was later captured by police.
A teenager who stabbed a policeman to death in Hanoi last year was
sentenced to death.
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Friday - Mar 28, 1997 [43]... Back to headlines
_[INLINE] Labour abuse charge at Vietnam Nike plants refuted_
Hanoi (Reuter) - A union official and a South Korean industry group on
Friday played down charges that factory workers who make Nike Inc
shoes in Vietnam are regularly abused.
``There are three Korean (companies) producing Nike shoes in the Ho
Chi Minh City area,'' said Park Chan shin, director of Korean trade
office KOTRA. ``There are quite good conditions there, especially
compared with local shoe factories.''
The union chief of a Taiwanese firm which makes Nike shoes said there
had been one incident recently when a supervisor ordered 56 workers to
run twice around the two-km (1.2-mile) factory perimeter for failing
to wear regulation workshoes.
``Before the recent dispute there was no big problem,'' said Nguyen
Minh Quang, chairman of the labour union at Pou Chen Vietnam
Enterprises Limited in Dong Nai province.
``If workers want to go to the toilet or take a drink of water they
can do so whenever they want,'' he said when asked about allegations
that some workers were limited to one trip to the bathroom and two
drinks of water per shift.
Quang said the union had been concerned about a shift at the Pou Chen
Corp unit's plant that stretched from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. with a break of
2 1/2 hours.
However, he said most workers were willing to work the shift because
they earned more money.
He said the average salary at the factory was about 800,000 dong
($68.67) a month. The average annual per capita income in Vietnam is
about $275.
On Thursday a group of human rights and labour activists held a news
conference in New York, alleging that workers were paid low wages,
suffered abuse and even corporal punishment.
A Nike executive said he could not confirm Nguyen's findings but said
the company welcomed and worked with independent observers to monitor,
train and improve working conditions overseas.
Vietnam itself has accused foreign managers of labour abuse on several
occasions.
A South Korean woman manager was given a three-month suspended jail
term last year for hitting workers on the head with a shoe.
KOTRA's Park said he had visited the three Korean factories that make
Nike shoes. ``I didn't check on (the amount of) time (alloted) to go
to the restroom or drink water,'' he said. ``But as far as I know,
such inhuman things are not happening.''
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Saturday, Mar 29, 1997 [42]... Back to headlines
_[INLINE] Malaysia and Vietnam to jointly operate oilfield _
HANOI (AFP) - Malaysia and Vietnam are to jointly start commercial
exploitation of a new oilfield located on the sea overlapping the two
countries, a report said Friday.
Results of an exploration of the oilfield conducted by a group of
foreign companies including Canadian International Petroleum
Conglomerate showed that the new oilfield could have an estimated
daily output of up to 10,200 barrels of oil and 179,000 cubic feet of
gas, the Saigon Times daily reported.
Commercial exploitation of the oilfield is scheduled to start in July
by IPC, PetroVietnam, Malaysia's Petronas Carigali and Sweden's Sands
Petroleum.
Vietnam operates three oilfields off its southern coast known as Dai
Hung (Big Bear), Bach Ho (White Tiger) and Rong (Dragon).
___________________________________
Saturday, Mar 29, 1997 [43]... Back to headlines
_[INLINE] Nearly 300 labour fatalities in Vietnam in 1996: report_
HANOI (AFP) - At least 285 people died in labour accidents in Vietnam
in 1996, a report said Saturday.
Ministry of labour figures showed there were 1,545 labour accidents
nationwide last year in which 285 people were killed and 467 were
badly injured, the Lao Dong newspaper reported.
But, the figures did not take into account casualties at private
enterprises which were not reported, the union newspaper said.
State owned enterprises account for about 80 percent of industrial
production.
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Friday, Mar 28, 1997 [44]... Back to headlines
_[INLINE] Capitalism overruns Ho Chi Minh City Sound of chirping birds
replaced by jackhammers_
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
The Globe and Mail
Ho Chi Minh City -- More than two decades after Saigon fell to the
Communists in a whirl of chaos, Vietnam's premier city has been
overrun by capitalism, with a booming free-market economy that has
turned it into Asia's fastest-growing, and fastest-congesting, urban
centre.
Designed by the French for a population of 400,000, Saigon, known
officially as Ho Chi Minh City, has seen its population double to an
estimated five million people since 1975, when the Vietnam War ended,
and is projected to double again to 10 million by 2010.
Once-gracious canals are now lined with squatters' shacks, filled with
migrant workers. The sound of chirping birds has been replaced by
jack- hammers and electric saws. And Saigon's famous leafy boulevards
are now the site of daily traffic jams.
With the regional economy growing by 15 per cent a year, the city has
not been able to keep pace with its people, or its popularity. The
compact city centre, which resembles a French town more than a teeming
Asian metropolis, has a population density of 50,000 people per square
kilometre, one of the highest in the world and three times the
government target.
Added to its population growth has been an explosion of wealth,
resulting in 1.2 million registered motorcycles and scooters, and
200,000 cars and buses on the roads, 10 times the number recorded in
1975.
Ho Chi Minh City's growth is so fast, a master plan signed in 1993 by
Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, a native of the city, already has been
rewritten. On a visit to his hometown last year, Mr. Kiet declared:
"No new Bangkok."
But the Communist government, which has accepted the market for
economic growth, has yet to decide if capitalism can save Ho Chi Minh
City from itself.
The city, which has no building funds of its own, has asked private
investors to start constructing the $11-billion (U.S.) worth of roads,
bridges, sewers, water-treatment stations and industrial parks it says
it needs to avoid urban collapse.
And private investors have rushed to the city, as if it were a latter-
day Klondike. Once almost empty of foreigners, Ho Chi Minh City has
attracted 1,200 foreign representative offices to its core, where a
dozen major hotels and 20 new high-rise office buildings have opened,
and 80 more are on the drawing board.
But in a country in which the state owns almost all land and wraps
public projects in layers of red tape, developers still question the
government's commitment.
To spread out growth, the Ho Chi Minh City authorities have sanctioned
two satellite cities, one to be developed by Vietnamese builders, the
other by a Taiwanese conglomerate.
The homegrown city, which follows U.S. plans from the early 1970s, has
yet to get off the ground because it needs a bridge over the Saigon
River that would connect it to the old city.
The bridge would cost as much as $100-million (U.S.). The only
investors who could afford such a large project want private land
rights on both sides of the river, and the government has yet to agree
to that.
The Taiwanese-built project, on the other hand, has broken ground with
a private-toll roadway that will serve as the backbone for Saigon
South, a city designed to house 500,000 people and form a new urban
core. In its biggest concession yet to capitalist forces, the local
government, which owns 30 per cent of the $242-million project,
granted land rights to the developer, Central Trading and Development
Group, owned by Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang Party.
The Taiwanese already have built a nearby export processing zone
employing 10,000 people. And they are about to complete a private
power plant to light up Saigon South, which was designed by U.S. and
Japanese architects to blend together elements of Singapore, Hong Kong
and San Francisco into a business capital for the greater Mekong
region.
Without more private development funds, Ho Chi Minh City's prospects
look bleak. The local state-run sewage company can afford to do only
half the maintenance work needed, leaving many of the city's canals
black. The garbage-collection agency can handle only 10 per cent of
the city's 4,000 tonnes a day of rubbish.
"The pollution is serious - 100 times the standard," said Vo Quang Ke,
director of the state-run Urban Drainage Co.
Even though one-third of the population lacks piped water, neither the
water nor sanitation departments has had a capital budget since the
war, one reason an estimated 40 per cent of the city's water supply is
lost in distribution.
With no money of its own, the government has asked Malaysian and
Korean firms to build private water-supply systems, and companies have
been told to clean up their own waste, although few seem to listen.
The government also continues to rely on its authoritarian tendencies.
It announced this month a plan, using "administrative means," to move
tens of thousands of squatters from the city to 150,000 proposed
public flats on the periphery, even though most of the people to be
moved rely on jobs or hawking in the city centre.
"We hope to teach them how to do new jobs in the industrial areas
outside the city," Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, assistant director of the
Institute for Urban Planning, said.
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