Investors reticent to support culture

Poor State management and overlapping duties are blamed for decreasing investment in cultural, sports and tourism activities in the southern region. Photo shows HCM City's Opera House on Dong Khoi Street. — VNS File Photo

HCM CITY — Investment in cultural, sports and tourism activities in the southern region has fallen short of expectations because of poor State management and overlapping duties, experts have said.

State policies and regulations needed to be adjusted and revised to be in line with socio-economic development, according to Ho Anh Tuan, deputy minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, speaking at a conference in HCM City on Friday.

Non-State companies in the cultural, sports and tourism sectors have not been sufficiently encouraged to invest in projects, and State budgets of agencies and departments were the primary sources of funds.

"HCM City failed to tap the potential resources of all economic sectors to invest in tourism due to a lack of a long-term development plan and poor coordination between State agencies and departments," said La Quoc Khanh, deputy director of the HCM City's Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Short-term planning, which spans only one year, had resulted in unprofessional results, Khanh said.

Le Duy Hanh, deputy head of the Viet Nam Stage Artists Association, said that although HCM City had been successful in calling for non-State investment in the theatre sector, with the establishment and effective operation of private theatres, such as Phu Nhuan Drama Theatre, Idecaf Drama Theatre and San Khau Nho (Small Stage) Drama Theatre, the theatre sector was still without a long-term development orientation.

Private stages offered a platform for young artists, stage managers, authors and managers, who play an important role in the development of the theatres' activities in the city, Hanh said.

"Management of public theatres, which are subsidised by the State budget, is not innovative," he added. The Government should restructure the country's stage system and allocate State budget funds to ensure the sustainable development of theatre activities, he said.

Nguyen Ngoc Minh, director of the Tien Giang Province's Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said that investment from private enterprises in tourism activities had increased significantly over the last few years, with most investors participating in the hospitality sector.

The number of hotels jumped to 113 units with 1,912 rooms in 2009, from 25 units with 385 rooms in 2000.

"The development of tourism helps create jobs for local workers, and promotes socio-economic development and infrastructure," Minh said.

Poor coordination between State agencies in implementing State policies had limited the amount of investment from enterprises in the culture, sports and tourism industry.

Minh said that incentive policies related to tax, credit and land were not sufficiently attractive to promote investment from all sectors. — VNS

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Cultural exchange ship docks in HCM City

Japanese youths taking part in a cultural exchange tour alight in HCM City to be greeted by a welcoming ceremony organised by their Vietnamese peers. — VNS Photo Van Dat

HCM CITY — The Fuji Maru carrying more than 320 youngsters from the 10 ASEAN member countries and Japan arrived in HCM City for the final leg of the Southeast Asian Youth trip yesterday, before it returns to Japan on December 15.

The ship berthed in HCM City's Saigon Port to begin its eleventh visit to Viet Nam.

At the port, Vietnamese youths and Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union's HCM City Chapter held a ceremony before the delegations left to take part in cultural exchange activities at the city hall.

During a press briefing on board just a few minutes before the welcoming ceremony, Phan Thi Thuy Tram, leader of the Vietnamese delegation, said they had already taken part in various cultural exchanges on board with the other delegations as well as in the countries they had visited.

They had discussed topics including youth participation in social activities, promoting cross-cultural understanding, climate change and international relations, among others, he added.

The activities aimed to promote mutual communication through the pursuit of common concerns and interests.

On Saturday evening, Viet Nam Night featuring Vietnamese ao dai and martial arts was held, Tram said, adding that participating youths from other ASEAN countries had really enjoyed the programme.

"I have learned a lot from other countries during the trip," Tram said.

The Southeast Asian Youth Programme (SSEAYP) 2010 delegation, which includes 29 Vietnamese youths, left Yokohama in Japan by ship on a 52-day journey through six countries that will see the youths return to Tokyo on December 15. Some 170 families in the city have volunteered to house the guests during their three-day stay which will expose them to Vietnamese culture. The city dwellers are eager to take part in the programme and several families have done this on more than one occasion.

The participants will learn Vietnamese culture from attending cultural and social activities covering the environment, international relations, education, health, food, and community development.

This year, the ship travelled to Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Viet Nam.

Started in 1974, SSEAYP is a joint initiative by Japan and the five founding ASEAN members — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. More than 10,000 youths from the ten ASEAN countries and Japan have travelled on the ship.

It seeks to strengthen friendship, co-operation, and understanding between Japanese and Southeast Asian youths to help build a peaceful, stable, and developed region.

Viet Nam joined the programme in 1996. — VNS

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Ethnic minority poverty target of new strategy

HA NOI — Sustainable poverty reduction for ethnic and mountainous areas should be an important task for the 2011-15 period, attendants at a conference in Ha Noi were told on Friday.

The function, held by the Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMA) in collaboration with the United Nations in Viet Nam, was aimed at recommending ways of reducing poverty.

Chairman of the National Assembly's Ethnic Council Ksor Phuoc estimated that the poverty rate in some communes and villages would increase to more than 60 per cent or even 70 to 75 per cent next year.

Giang Seo Phu, a member of the Party Central Committee and chairman of the Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs, said the rate of reduction for ethnic people was much slower than the national average.

"Life expectancy, nutrition and other aspects of their lives remain low. Without big challenges in strategies in the near future, most poor people in Viet Nam will still be in ethnic minority and mountainous areas," Su said.

He said Viet Nam had made remarkable achievements in hunger eradication and poverty alleviation. The poverty rate had fallen from 58.1 per cent in 1993 to 12.1per cent last year.

But there is steady progress. The poverty rate among ethnic minorities and people in mountain areas fell from 86 per cent in 1993 to about 31.2 per cent last year.

This was in part due to the National Target Prog-ramme for Poverty Reduction, the Programme for Socio-economic Development of Ethnic Minority and Mountainous Areas in the 2006-10 period, the Programme for Rapid Sustainable Poverty Reduction in the 62 poorest districts and the policy on supporting ethnic groups facing extreme hardship.

John Hendra, UN resident co-ordinator, said if the ethnic problem was to be effectively addressed, new approaches had to be considered.

"Future poverty reduction is likely to be much more difficult, more complex and more costly," Hendra said.

He said poverty reduction among ethnic minority groups was culturally sensitive and specific targeting measures were necessary.

Hendra said ethnic minorities would continue to need extra support through national poverty reduction programmes and more attention in key sectoral policies, including health, education, water and sanitation and nutrition.

"In addition, creating opportunities for employment and integration in the market economy is just as important for sustainable poverty reduction," he said.

Tran Van Thuat, former director of CEMA's Ethnic Policy Department, said poor people should be classified into different groups to make intervention more effective. — VNS

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Higher education audit plagued by inexperience

HA NOI — More than 45 per cent of universities and colleges in the country have completed their educational quality self-assessment, but the project has experienced difficulties because of a lack of experience among those conducting the review.

A total of 185 out of more than 400 universities and colleges across the country have completed the self-assessment review. The Ministry of Education and Training plans that by 2015, 90 per cent of universities and colleges will have completed the work.

The self-assessment review started at the beginning of 2008, and is intended to improve university and college quality in terms of syllabus, facilities and student results.

However, most academic staff taking part in the survey claimed that the review was an unfamiliar process.

Head of the Educational Quality Examination and Verification Division under the Ha Noi Community College Pham Mai Hong said: "Most of the college's officials and teachers struggled because they didn't understand how to conduct a self-assessment."

Compiling accurate statistics also posed a problem.

Chu Thi Minh, deputy head of the Training Division of the Thai Nguyen College of Medicine, said that her college lacked post-graduate employment figures, and feedback on teaching materials.

Another official, Nguyen Van Minh, from the Ha Noi Foreign Trade University, said the university also met difficulties in compiling the necessary data.

"Despite having received training, university departments still thought that the collection of data was the work of the quality verification centres and had failed to compile the necessary figures," he said.

Pham Xuan Thanh, deputy director of the Department of Educational Quality Examination and Verification, said that the quality audit was a new experience for the country, and the department only required minimum assessment norms.

"Some universities and colleges ignored important benchmarks so they failed to properly conduct the assessment," he said.

At present the biggest obstacle to the work was funding, and the Ministry of Education and Training would work with the Ministry of Finance to issue regulations next year.

"The university self-assessment project met difficulties because assigned officials failed to understand their tasks despite attending training courses, which was compounded by a lack of experience in the work," Thanh said.

The Ministry of Education and Training had begun drafting plans for the improvement and development of the educational quality system for the 2011-20 period, in which educational quality verification organisations and strengthened international co-operation in the field would be prioritised, he said.

Under the ministry's regulations, universities and colleges would be audited in terms of their syllabus, facilities, management, teacher quality and measures to improve education standards. — VNS

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Lecturers told to use teaching methods that foster creativity

HCM CITY — Lecturers at universities should apply teaching methods that foster creativity and self-learning, experts said at a workshop yesterday in HCM City.

At the workshop on teaching methods, speakers noted that the Ministry of Education and Training had asked universities nationwide to apply new methodologies in the classroom.

However, rote learning, with students only listening to lectures and not asking questions, was still the predominant method used at the university level, according to Dr. Pham Duc Chinh of the University of Economics and Law under Viet Nam National University-HCM City.

Chinh said the traditional methods encouraged only passive learning, with many students unwilling to do research in the library or Internet.

The emphasis on exams also tends to promote this kind of learning, according to Chinh.

In addition, most universities and colleges nationwide, especially in HCM City, have had to rent spaces that lack proper facilities, including computers.

Some universities and colleges in Viet Nam have been applying the problem-based methodology, which is used in many universities around the world.

However, the learning results had not changed because lecturers at pedagogy universities were not trained in these methods.

Many lecturers, for example, assign students to solve problems but offer no guidance, which fails to attract students' interest.

The large number of sources on the Internet has also confused many students, who do not know how to select proper websites.

Nguyen Thi Tuyet Hanh, a lecturer with the Institute of Educational Management, said other methodologies, including project-based teaching, case studies, group discussions and research work, were available. Information about these approaches could be found on the Internet.

She said teachers should take more responsibility in choosing their materials and implementing new methods of teaching in the classroom. — VNS

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Indonesian community donates blood

HCM CITY — The Indonesian community in HCM City and neighbouring provinces donated 13,600ml blood during a humanitarian activity held yesterday afternoon by the General Consulate of the Republic of Indonesia in the city.

At the consulate's third blood drive, around 50 people donated blood with the support of the HCM City Red Cross Association.

According to Indonesian Consul General Pande K. Wuri Handayani, the event was aimed at enhancing solidarity between the people of Viet Nam and Indonesia.

Artist's Viet Nam ride promotes road safety

HCM CITY — Artist Quang Dat starts his month-long journey on his Vespa scooter today, from southernmost Ca Mau Province to Ha Noi, to promote traffic safety.

More than 1,000 traffic police have signed his scooter. Dat had previously owned another scooter with the signatures of 500 names of famous Vietnamese people.

Thua Thien Hue trains rural workforce

HCM CITY — Thua Thien Hue Province will spend VND290 billion (US$14,871) on a vocational programme to train rural workers who will be required to take jobs in the industrial sector.

The programme, which will begin in 2011 and end in 2020, targets to raise the percentage of trained workers in the labour force to 60 per cent by 2015 and 70 per cent by 2020.

The province People's Committee, which wants to shift the economy from agriculture to industry, is offering the courses to ensure that there are a sufficient number of trained workers for the province's industrial parks.

Funds for the programme are from State and provincial budgets as well as the private sector.

Market violations continue to rise

HCM CITY — The municipal market management bureau has, as of November this year, discovered a total of 15,149 violations including counterfeit goods, illegally imported goods and banned goods, an increase of 579 cases over the same period last year.

The bureau has levied fines worth more than VND70.2 billion (US$3.5 million) in 10,284 cases.

Inspectors said that although supervision and inspections have been strengthened this year, the production and trafficking of counterfeit goods still continued in more "complicated" ways. They did not elaborate.

Bureau officials said their key task from now until the Tet (Lunar New Year) festival that falls in February, 2011 would be to carry out inspections at sales points participating in the city's price stabilisation programme. — VNS

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Gov't provides VND335b for disaster-hit provinces

HA NOI — Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung signed a decision on Friday entrusting the Finance Ministry to extract VND335 billion (US$17.1) from the State budget and 8,600 tonnes of rice from national reserves to support provinces stricken by natural disasters.

The beneficiary provinces include: Quang Tri; Thua Thien-Hue; Quang Nam; Quang Ngai; Binh Dinh; Phu Yen; Khanh Hoa; Ninh Thuan; Binh Thuan; Dak Lak; and Thai Nguyen.

The PM also asked the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs to continue to maintain a close watch on the scarcity of food and hunger in flood-hit provinces and to keep him informed.

Provincial People's Committees Chairmen will be responsible for effectively managing and using the allocated cash and rice, and are expected to mobilise their local budgets and other legal financial resources to surmount the consequences of natural disasters, according to the decision.

Dung also signed a decision on Friday to provide lifeboats, chemicals and vaccines for Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Thua Thien-Hue, and Quang Ngai provinces. — VNS

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