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Three-year-old Ho Thi Thuy Ngan goes to her new pre-school in Thuan Giao Commune, southern Binh Duong Province's Thuan An District. A video clip posted on Youtube uncovered Ngan's former teacher used violence against her. — Photo Trung Kien |
HCM CITY — The frequency with which child abuse cases are being exposed in the country has raised public concern and elicited calls for action to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.
The nation received with horror the news of teenaged worker Nguyen Hao Anh who was branded with hot irons, had industrial solvents poured on his wounds and his teeth pulled out with pliers by his employers. The torture took place in the southernmost province of Ca Mau.
A few days ago there was an uproar over an online video that showed a three-year-old girl at an illegal day-care centre in Binh Duong Province being badly mistreated by a 52-year-old baby-sitter.
The recent case of abuse suffered by four abused orphaned children in Dong Nai Province moved many parents to tears.
Experts say that Viet Nam needs to strengthen laws and regulations as well as their implementation to protect its children. The "rod culture" that most people in the country subscribe to has limited efforts to enforce children's rights in the country, they add.
Disciplining children is traditionally considered a family matter and officials are still loath to interfere.
Truong Thi Mai, Chairwoman of the National Assembly Committee for Social Issues, has urged the State to interfere strongly and deal with violence on children.
The lawmaker says she cannot bear that there is even a single case of violence against children in Viet Nam.
The local authourities immediately dealt with people found to abuse children when cases came to their notice, Mai says, but the problem needs broader preventive solutions implemented by the state.
Among the suggestions being made to improve the situation is that a network of kindergartens are built at industrial parks and more professional training courses opened for baby-sitters.
While many parents assume day-care centres and kindergartens are safe, happy places to leave their children while they work hard to make ends meet, the recent exposes have made them uneasy and insecure.
Ho Minh Luc, father of the three-year-old Ho Thi Thuy Ngan whose maltreatment was filmed and posted online, has said he does not know where to leave the toddler to resume working.
With both he and his wife working as manual labourers, a regular public kindergarten is beyond their means. They were paying Nguyen Thi Phung, the babysitter who was filmed treating their child very roughly, about VND300,000 (US$15) a month.
According to an official in Thuan Giao Commune, where the couple lives, there are more than 80,000 immigrants in the commune.
They don't know how many children the immigrants have, but all public and private day-care centres and kindergartens in the commune are always overloaded, the official says.
There is a huge demand for daycare centres and kindergartens at industrial parks, but most of them have no place for workers to leave their children. Industrial park owners have said they cannot afford such facilities, Mai says, adding the State should take steps to force them to build kindergartens for the workers' benefit.
At a recent conference on children's rights in Viet Nam, Tran Thi Thanh Thanh, Chairwoman of the Viet Nam Association for the Protection of Children's Rights, said the legal system for child protection was still poor and the quality of day-care centres still bad.
"Baby-sitters think that they have the right to teach the children a lesson, and this often takes the form of corporal punishment," she said.
Viet Nam has undergone unprecedented changes in the past two decades on its industrialisation and modernisation path, but this has also made large sections of the population more vulnerable.
Studies have noted that rural residents are forced to leave tight-knit communities and migrate to the cities, where there aren't enough services, let alone jobs.
Binh Duong Province, the province that has attracted the highest foreign direct investment in the country, has more than 700,000 immigrant workers, with 80 per cent of them women of child-bearing age.
The province's development of kindergartens and day-care centres has not been able to keep pace with its speedy industrialisation, says Mai Thi Dung, member of Binh Duong Province's People's Council (the local legislature).
She says the province is calling for investors to build quality kindergartens to meet the workers' needs. — VNS
