WWF proposes biosphere reserve in Mekong delta

WWF proposes biosphere reserve in Mekong delta

QĐND – Wednesday, January 06, 2010, 21:22 (GMT+7)

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has recommended that Vietnam goes through the necessary procedures so that the coastal areas of the Mekong delta provinces of Soc Trang, Tra Vinh and Ben Tre can be recognised as a world biosphere reserve.

WWF was reported by the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on January 5 as saying that this recognition would help Vietnam to expand its coverage of mangrove forests and create opportunities for sustainable development in the three provinces.

Soc Trang, Tra Vinh and Ben Tre provinces share a 202 km coastline and lie on the Mekong estuary which runs into the East Sea through the two biggest rivers in the Mekong delta, the Hau and the Tien.

They are home to 17 million people and important for the country’s food security as well as the world at large and their mangrove forests protect the coastline from the sea, acting as a buffer zone.

Source: VNA

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France helps Mekong Delta improve urban water supply

France helps Mekong Delta improve urban water supply

QĐND – Thursday, December 31, 2009, 22:23 (GMT+7)

Six provinces and cities in the Mekong Delta are implementing the second phase of a safe water supply programme to increase the number of people in urban, commercial and industrial zones accessible to safe water to 85 percent.

The programme, costing 32 million Euros, will be funded by the French Development Agency (AFD) in 3 years starting in 2009. About 5 to 15 projects to be carried out in these provinces and cities can get direct access to the programme’s credit.

Earlier, the European Union (EU) sponsored Euro3 million to help Mekong Delta provinces protect the environment with projects designed to train staff and buy equipment for environmental management, observation, forecast and protection.

Water supply in the region does not meet the demand of sdaily activities and commercial production. Annually, the urban areas discharge nearly 102 million cubic metres of waste water, 600,000 tonnes of solid waste and 47 million litres of liquid waste.

Source: CPV

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Mekong Delta in despair as rodents ravage rice paddies

Mekong Delta in despair as rodents ravage rice paddies

QĐND – Monday, November 02, 2009, 9:48 (GMT+7)

Farmers in the Mekong Delta have not eaten and slept well in these days due to the return of rats and mice, which have decimated large numbers of rice crops.

Over 1,500 hectares of fall-winter crops in Tra Vinh Province were destroyed by an infestation of mice.

Farmer Son Danh, in Tra Vinh’s Chau Thanh District, visited his one hectare rice paddy at dawn to collect dead mice. These vermin have gnawed 30 percent of the farmer’s blossoming field.

Fearing that the rice field would be ruined, Son Danh bought two kilograms of Biorat, a mouse and rat poison to scatter around the field.

Over the first few days, some 60 to 70 per cent of rats were killed; however, the rodents have still ravaged much of the field.

Tran Van Cong, chairman of Farmer Association in My Chanh Ward, Chau Thanh District, said, “Rats have ravaged and destroyed 40 percent of 360 hectares of rice paddies in the village of Giong Trom in My Chanh Ward, including four hectares that were completely destroyed.”

Chau Thanh district’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development estimated around 550 hectares were infested by field mice, with five to 30 percent of crops destroyed and 564 hectares in Cau Ngang District with ten to 30 percent of crops destroyed.

While farmers fretted about the skyrocketing numbers of rats and mice, agricultural officials have done little to reverse the situation.

Farmer Nguyen Van Tien in Cau Ngang said farmers were happy to see a team of inspectors ten days ago, yet there has been no feedback to farmers’ proposals of rodenticides.

Nguyen Manh Thai, head of Chau Thanh District’s Plant Protection, warned farmers to irrigate water into fields in a bid to demolish mouseholes and put rodenticide at the entrances and bushes.

The danger of gnawing rats in the fields of Tra Vinh happened 15 years ago, damaging thousands of hectares of rice paddies. The province launched a campaign to buy the animal’s tail and offered money to farmers who killed many mice. The campaign proved effective.

Many are now asking whether officials should try the method one again in order to stem the flow of rodents and protect rice crops. 

Source: SGGP

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Mekong Delta in despair as rodents ravage rice paddies

Farmers in the Mekong Delta have not eaten and slept well in these days due to the return of rats and mice, which have decimated large numbers of rice crops.

Two boys are hunting  field rats

Over 1,500 hectares of fall-winter crops in Tra Vinh Province were destroyed by an infestation of mice.

Farmer Son Danh, in Tra Vinh’s Chau Thanh District, visited his one hectare rice paddy at dawn to collect dead mice. These vermin have gnawed 30 percent of the farmer’s blossoming field.

Fearing that the rice field would be ruined, Son Danh bought two kilograms of Biorat, a mouse and rat poison to scatter around the field.

Over the first few days, some 60 to 70 per cent of rats were killed; however, the rodents have still ravaged much of the field.

Tran Van Cong, chairman of Farmer Association in My Chanh Ward, Chau Thanh District, said, “Rats have ravaged and destroyed 40 percent of 360 hectares of rice paddies in the village of Giong Trom in My Chanh Ward, including four hectares that were completely destroyed.”

Chau Thanh district’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development estimated around 550 hectares were infested by field mice, with five to 30 percent of crops destroyed and 564 hectares in Cau Ngang District with ten to 30 percent of crops destroyed.

While farmers fretted about the skyrocketing numbers of rats and mice, agricultural officials have done little to reverse the situation.

Farmer Nguyen Van Tien in Cau Ngang said farmers were happy to see a team of inspectors ten days ago, yet there has been no feedback to farmers’ proposals of rodenticides.

Nguyen Manh Thai, head of Chau Thanh District’s Plant Protection, warned farmers to irrigate water into fields in a bid to demolish mouseholes and put rodenticide at the entrances and bushes.

The danger of gnawing rats in the fields of Tra Vinh happened 15 years ago, damaging thousands of hectares of rice paddies. The province launched a campaign to buy the animal’s tail and offered money to farmers who killed many mice. The campaign proved effective.

Many are now asking whether officials should try the method one again in order to stem the flow of rodents and protect rice crops. 

Source: SGGP Bookmark & Share

Mekong Delta hosts annual Khmer culture fest

Ok Om Bok, the largest festival of the year of the Khmer people in the Mekong Delta, is taking place from October 26 to November 1.

Soc Trang Province is hosting various activities including a traditional boat race seen as the most exciting event during the festive days.

This undated file photo shows an Ok Om Bok boat race in Soc Trang Province (Photo: SGGP)

The festival features many cultural activities including an exhibition of the socio-economic achievements and cultural developments of Soc Trang Province, information about Vietnamese ethnic groups, and artistic performances.

During the festival, there is also a trade fair organized by the Ministry of Industry and Trade and local authorities to attract more than 180 enterprises with over 430 booths displaying handicrafts, farm and garden equipment, textiles and more.

This year’s traditional boat race will take place in Soc Trang on November 1-2 with participation of 49 Khmer teams from Mekong Delta provinces.

The Ok Om Bok celebrations, also known as the Khmer Moon Thanksgiving Ceremony, fall on October 15 of the lunar calendar. It is a time for the Khmer to show their gratitude to the Moon Goddess for giving them a bumper harvest and rich aquatic sources.

Source: SGGP Bookmark & Share

Delta drugstores fail to meet standard

Doctor Nguyen Thi Tuyet Phuong gives multi-vaccine to a baby for protection against tuberculosis, hepatitis B, whooping cough and measles in southern Can Tho City. — VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Vu

CA MAU — The establishment of drugstores meeting the Good Pharmacy Practices (GPP) standard has not made much headway in Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta provinces, according to health officials.

At a conference on strengthening State management of medicine distribution last Friday, held in southernmost Ca Mau Province, representatives of health departments from the delta said they had not been able to achieve much success in encouraging pharmaceutical companies and drugstores to adopt the GPP standard.

Only 12 drugstores in these provinces had reached the GPP standard, and most of them were the drugstores in the provinces’ general hospitals.

Dong Thap Province has the most strongly developed pharmaceutical sector with seven GPP standard drugstores.

The Mekong Delta region in general suffers from inadequate development of the health sector, with its network of hospitals and clinics requiring significant upgrades, the Southwest Region Steering Committee said at the conference.

While Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung had approved a project to build and upgrade the network of hospitals and clinics in the Mekong Delta provinces using State capital and other sources for the 2008-10 period, implementation had been very slow, the committee said.

Hospitals in Tra Vinh Province’s Cang Long, Cau Ke and Duyen Hai districts and Bac Lieu Province’s Gia Rai, Vinh Loi and Phuoc Long districts have only completed the first phase of the project including ground clearance and setting up bids.

These hospitals will not be ready to open as scheduled by 2010.

Slow disbursement, complicated procedures and time spent in adjusting plans to increase in-patient capacity to meet increasing demand were blamed for the delay.

The committee also found that the training needed to improve professional skills of health officials in order to use new equipment effectively had not been provided because the Ministry of Health had not yet co-operated with localities to get this done.

Market shortage

Kien Giang’s Health Department said that hospitals in its districts and communes were facing a marked shortage of specialised doctors and equipment including diagnostic machines like the ultrasound scanner, X-ray machines and electrocardiograph Ecg machine.

Nguyen Van Phuoc, deputy head of the general health clinic in An Phu District’s Quoc Thai Commune, said that even masks and clothing to prevent A/H1N1 flu as well quarantining facilities to respond to an outbreak of the flu had not been provided.

In Hau Giang Province’s Long My District, where swine flu has broken out, there was still no place to quarantine patients.

Officials said the capital allotted for upgrading health clinics and hospitals in the province’s communes and districts was too little.

Kien Giang plans to completely upgrade its health network by 2015.

It envisages all hospitals and clinics in communes and districts will invest in needed infrastructure and equipment and attract paramedical staff with tertiary level education to work there.

However, the province does not have the VND300 billion (US$16 million) needed to implement the plan.

The health sector in Can Tho Province needs VND3 trillion ($168 million) to upgrade and build more new hospitals including the Can Tho City General Hospital, the Can Tho Pediatric Hospital, general hospitals and specialty hospitals in districts by 2015.

The provincial People’s Committee has asked the Government for funding.

Currently, most hospitals in the province are overloaded. The Can Tho General Hospital has 700 beds while around 2,000 patients come to the hospital every day. In the Can Tho Pediatric Hospital, two or three patients are forced to share the same bed.

Many other Mekong Delta provinces share Can Tho’s plight.

According to the Ministry of Health, the doctor-patient ratios in several Mekong Delta provinces are among the lowest in the country.

Pham Minh Cong, Secretary of the Party Committee in Nam Du Commune of Kien Giang Province’s Kien Hai District, said that the commune has more than 4,000 residents and around 6,000 fishermen from other provinces who are served by just six doctors and nurses.

Pham Minh Hue, deputy head of Kien Giang Province’s Health Department, said that hospitals in districts and communes struggled to get doctors and nurses because of low remuneration and the lack of preferential policies.

This had not improved for many years now, he said.

He said many doctors were ready to repay the State to get out of commitments to work in rural areas made before joining medical universities. They need to be encouraged to fulfill their commitment with better salaries and many preferential policies, Hue added. —

Source: vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn

Deadly alcohol menaces Mekong Delta province

Authorities in the southern province of Bac Lieu incinerate illicit alcohol. Home-distillers in the Mekong Delta are using industrial alcohol to boost home-made spirits, although this is forbidden. — VNA/VNS Photo Huynh Suu

DONG THAP — Eighty six per cent of Vietnamese spirit (ruou) samples collected from 96 home-distilleries in 12 localities in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta province of Dong Thap have been found to contain levels of toxic alcohol that can cause permanent disability and even death.

The dangerous substances in much of the alcohol included industrial alcohols, including methanol, ethanol, fufural and aldehyde.

In two weeks in June alone, 10 people died in the province and six others were hospitalised after drinking toxic spirit.

The level of deadly methanol in 12 samples was 27 to 80 times higher than permitted.

According to the director of the province’s Department of Science and Technology, Nguyen Phuoc Son, only 14 products in the province were guaranteed by quality assurance certificates.

None of the 45 spirit samples tested in the districts of Chau Thanh, Lai Vung, Lap Vo, Tam Nong and Hong Ngu Town reached recognised standards of quality, he said.

“More seriously, only 40 out of thousands of tiny home distilleries in the province have obtained quality assurance certificates,” Son added. “Typically, of 333 wine producers in Thap Muoi District, only three reach the standard of quality.”

“We have seized all the substandard wine discovered from the inspections and served strong warnings on 20 home-distillers found to be violating food hygiene and safety regulations.”

Son said he was co-ordinating with the provincial Health Department to carry out another examination on mineral-water producers and ice makers in the province.

“As soon as we have finished, we will punish all violators,” he said.

HCM City Public Health and Hygiene Institute deputy director Nguyen Xuan Mai has warned that although the use of methanol is banned by the Government, many home-distillers use industrial alcohol to give their spirit more “kick”. —

Source: vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn

Delta plans tourist quadrangle

Foreign tourists go sight-seeing on the Hau River. Cai Rang floating market in Mekong Delta province Can Tho and My Khanh eco-tourism zone are two of the most attractive destinations in the area. — VNA/VNS Photo Quang Nhut.

HCM CITY — A five-year master plan that aims to form a tourism quadrangle in Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta is being developed by the provinces of An Giang and Kien Giang and the cities of Ca Mau and Can Tho.

“The plan is being drawn up because the industry needs co-operation between the Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism, tourist businesses and tourist business associations,” said Dr Do Cam Tho of the Tourism Development Institute under the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism.

The goal of the master plan, which covers the 2010-15 period with a vision towards 2025, is to develop the region’s socio-economic, cultural and tourism development. Officials from those localities have been working together to upgrade or build new tourist infrastructure as well as encourage other economic sectors to invest in the industry.

Under the master plan, each locality would place an emphasis on its own tourist features that are not similar to others.

Joint activities

Businesses and national tourism promotion agencies must co-ordinate activities for the industry to prosper, Tho said.

Other joint activities include training personnel, building a tourism promotion centre and websites, and improving the quality of tourism products and services.

Under the plan, Kien Giang Province’s Phu Quoc Island, known for world-class beaches, is slated to become an international-standard eco-tourism area.

The draft plan for the island calls for luxury entertainment services, five-star hotels, casinos, conference halls, exhibition and trade centres, training centres and centres for advanced scientific research.

Also planned are duty-free zones for air and sea ports, craft villages and a centre for hi-tech agricultural production for tourism.

Officials working on the master plan said infrastructure in the quadrangle area, including bridges, roads, airports and ferries, needed to be upgraded or newly built.

More three to five-star hotels and attractive recreational facilities should be built, they said.

Tourism products were still poor and very few craft villages attracted foreign visitors, officials said.

The Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta welcomes about 3.5 million tourists every year.

The quadrangle of An Giang, Kien Giang, Ca Mau and Can Tho employs 3,000 people in the tourism sector, but only 50 per cent have received formal training.

To meet the increasing demand of tourism in the region, the Delta needs at least 10,000 employees, and they should be professionally trained, according to the Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism. —

Source: vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn

High hopes for Mekong Delta Tour

HA NOI — Some 79 cyclists from 15 of the best teams in the country will be setting off from Ben Tre on the first 43.2km stage of the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta Cycling Tour today.

The race, sponsored by Vinaphone, will have six stages totalling 595km that take in An Giang, Ben Tre, Tien Giang, Tra Vinh, Soc Trang, Can Tho, Kien Giang, Hau Giang and Vinh Long.

Au Xuan Don, deputy director of An Giang Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said: “The standard of competition this year is very high, because the tour has attracted the best Vietnamese cyclists, such as Mai Cong Hieu, Do Anh Tuan, Nguyen Van Duc, Trinh Phat Dat and Mai Nguyen Hung.”

Hieu has dominated the men’s national cycling time-trial event, winning an astonishing 11 titles over 11 years. He has also won two Southeast Asian Games gold medals in the men’s time-trial, as well as medals in domestic and international races.

This year’s event has four road races, which should suit young riders such as Hung, Nguyen Minh Tam, Tran Quoc Dung, Bui Minh Thuy and Vo Thanh Anh Khoa.

The tour will be a crucial test ahead of the National Cycling Championship next month in Vung Tau City and An Giang Province and the 25th Southeast Asian Games in Laos this December.

Pham The Trieu, a member of the organising board, said: “The event carries a purse of VND130 million (US$7,300). The sponsor Vinaphone will also be handing out many gifts.”

The event’s first and last stage will be broadcast live on Viet Nam Television’s VTV3. —

Source: vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn

Tai storms to Delta Tour stage win

TRA VINH — Domesco Dong Thap team’s Nguyen Van Tai won the second stage of the 2009 Mekong Delta Tour yesterday with a time of 3 hours, 50 minutes and 36 seconds.

The 145km stage was from Ben Tre City to Tra Vinh Town.

Tai came in first after a sprint finish with Dang Ngoc Tu, Truong Nguyen Thanh Nhan and Bui Minh Thuy.

Two kilometres from the finish line, the four men broke away from a group of seven, who already had distanced themselves from all others with 4km remaining.

Tai took the yellow jersey with his aggregate time of 4:43: 21 after the second stage from HCM City team’s Le Van Quynh, who came in a disappointing 41st in the second stage after an impressive win in the first stage around Ben Tre City on Saturday.

Sai Gon Plant Protection team’s Dang Ngoc Tu came in second, and Tu’s teammate Truong Nguyen Thanh Nhan finished third.

During the race, there were several accidents due to the wet and slippery roads, forcing 20 riders to pull out of the race due to injuries, leaving 53 to reach the finish line.

The 18th tour goes through nine provinces and cities before finishing on September 9 in Long Xuyen City of An Giang Province. —

Source: vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn