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Japanese police at a checkpoint near the edge of the contaminated exclusion zone around the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station. After the Fukushima disaster, many Southeast Asian nations are slowing their nuclear pursuits as Vietnam charges ahead.

Personnel shortage could hinder ambition to become first nuclear nation in Southeast Asia

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10 years of Meth use

(Reuters) – Most people in Thailand’s drug rehabilitation centers are there for using it. Most drug arrests in Japan are related to it. And Vietnam, the United Nations says, is its “next big market.”

Methamphetamine is now the top drug in many Asian countries, its soaring popularity straddling social and economic divides. It is widely known in pill form by its Thai name ya ba (“crazy medicine”) and in its purer crystalline form as ice or shabu. It is relatively cheap, highly addictive and — because its main source is former poppy-growing areas of Shan State — another daunting front in Myanmar’s war on drugs.

The number of ya ba pills seized in Southeast Asia quadrupled from 32 million in 2008 to 133 million in 2010, and that is only a fraction of what’s being produced, says the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Myanmar’s record is patchy — only 2 million pills were seized there in 2010 — but officials blame China, India and Thailand for supplying the drug’s main ingredients: ephedrine and pseudoephedrine.

Most pills are made in semi-autonomous areas such as Special Region 2, a once opium-rich region bordering China. It is controlled by a well-armed ethnic cease-fire group called the United Wa State Army, which has been described by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as “the leading heroin and methamphetamine trafficking organization in Southeast Asia.”

Most of Myanmar’s methamphetamine is trafficked to other Asian countries. But with a growing domestic market, its popularity in Myanmar might already have eclipsed opium and heroin, says the UNODC.

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The country may be off most companies’ radars but with such a young, IT-ready population, its economy could take off at any moment

Vietnam has “a real energy about the place”, says Paul Farrer, chairman of Aspire Global Network. “It’s a sort of ‘can do’ place — very vibrant, very positive.”

Farrer speaks to Recruiter following Aspire’s launch in Asia, where he is due to relocate as we go to print, and says a Vietnamese arm is due in the next couple of years.

One issue Aspire will have to overcome, Farrer says, is that with locals’ monthly wages typically averaging below $100 (£63), margins don’t look so promising. “You need to find a volume market,” he says, or else focus purely on ex-patriate jobs.

In terms of hot markets, Rupali Edekar, country manager of Robert Walters Vietnam, reports “particular growth of late” in six sectors: FMCG, manufacturing, IT, healthcare/technical healthcare, retail banking and hospitality, earmarking the latter three for further growth.

However, Edekar sees “particular gaps in skill sets within the banking & financial sector, especially within the local talent market at the middle to senior management levels”, something she thinks will take some time to remedy, and also identified by Manpower’s 2011 report ‘Building a High-Skilled Economy: The New Vietnam’.

This survey also cited that 95% of respondents to a Manpower/TNS survey thought greater co- operation between business and educators was needed. Nonetheless, a regional spokesperson from computer manufacturer Intel Asia tells Recruiter that the country’s “strong focus on education”, alongside the youthful vibrancy Farrer alluded to, are key factors in the firm’s success in the region.

Intel employs over 900 people in the country, “the vast majority” locals, and has been working with the Ministries of Labour and Education & Training and various universities and colleges. It also regular sends a number of employees on career development assignments to China, Malaysia, the UK and the US.

A similar scheme is in place at software developer Harvey Nash Outsourcing, with chairman Paul Smith saying it has around 200 Vietnamese employees abroad at any one time. Such initiatives are key to making international firms “the first port of call for any student” in Vietnam, Smith says.

WORK-READY GRADUATES

Despite Manpower’s fears, Smith is impressed with the nation’s IT talent, saying “they teach their graduates IT to make them as work-ready as they can… they are much more ready than their UK counterparts”, with three-year degrees including a six-month internship as standard.

The downside of this is that in a culture that prides itself on Maths Olympiad medals, Aspire’s Farrer reports that “anything creative” is considered less important. Another issue, as Farrer puts it, is the “lengthy” process of applying for a recruitment company licence.

With Harvey Nash recruiting in Vietnam, Smith goes further, saying that “bribes can speed it up… if you are immoral enough to want to do that you can get it done quicker”. This is something that can be an issue in any emerging market, Smith adds. On the question of Vietnam as an emerging market, Farrar adds: “Lots of people are thinking that Asia’s [already] emerged, and it hasn’t. If you look at their population compared to Europe or the US, they haven’t even started yet.”

Assuming no dodgy procedures, it might be best to get your application for a recruitment company licence in now — who knows how far Vietnam’s economy will have gone by the time it gets approved.

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A tourist looks for a taxi on arrival at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City. Airport authorities are planning to make it more difficult for taxi firms to operate at the airport in a bid to reduce violations and improve services.

(It was about time, since it’s not rare to see tourist paying 500.000 Vnd to 1.000.000 Vnd to come from the airport to Pham Ngu Lao, when the regular fee is 120.000 Vnd. This will help improve the tourism appreciation of Vietnam.)

Noted firm Mai Linh temporarily banned from Tan Son Nhat International Airport.

Ho Chi Minh City authorities are taking drastic measures to curb the illegal actions of taxi companies at Tan Son Nhat International Airport, an official told the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Thursday (February 9).

Dang Tuan Tu, director of the Tan Son Nhat Aviation Security Center (TASC), said the center was boosting patrols to detect and punish violating taxis and will propose the revocation of business licenses for taxi companies found repeating their violations.

In the long term, the center will draft a plan that would set more conditions for taxis to operate at the airport, he told Tuoi Tre.

Tu said the airport currently has around 10,000 taxis belonging to 11 companies. It is estimated that there are 15,000-16,000 trips made by taxis from and to the airport each day.

Early this year, the Southern Airports Corporation had issued new regulations on the operation of taxis at the airport, Tu said.

One of them said that a taxi company which has been fined 30 times for violations – no matter how small the violations are – within a month will be suspended. Severe violations include taxi drivers refusing to carry passengers for short distances, overcharging or causing disorder.

More than one month after the new regulations were issued, the Tan Son Nhat authorities banned Mai Linh Taxi, a popular and reputed company, from picking up passengers at the airport’s taxi terminal between February 5 and March 4.

The reason, the authorities said, is that there were 45 Mai Linh Taxi drivers who were fined in the first three weeks of January.

Last year, TASC detected more than 2,000 violations by taxi firms at the airport, with the most typical violations being overcharging (drivers not turning on the meter but asking for a lump sum), picking up passengers at wrong locations, refusing to carry passengers on short distances and resisting security officers on duty.

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In this photo taken Feb. 4, 2012, Nguyen Thi Thuong stands by the ruins of her house in Tien Lang District, northern city of Haiphong, Vietnam. On Jan. 5, Thuong returned home from dropping her kids off at school to find a mob of armed police in riot gear surrounding her farm house. Thuong knew authorities were there to forcibly throw the family off the land they had leased for fish farming but her husband, Doan Van Vuon, wasn't leaving without a fight. In a guerrilla-style ambush reminiscent of a Vietnam War battle, family members laid homemade land mines around the house and fired on the advancing forces with improvised shotguns, wounding six police officers and soldiers. (AP Photo/VnExpress, Nguyen Hung)

HANOI, Vietnam – When local police arrived in riot gear to evict the Vuon clan, family members were ready with homemade land mines and improvised shotguns. In a guerrilla-style ambush reminiscent of a Vietnam War battle, they wounded six officers.

But instead of drawing public condemnation, last month’s rare violence by fish farmers trying to hold onto leased land in the northern port city of Hai Phong has made a national hero of family ringleader Doan Van Vuon and ripped open a debate about heavy-handed seizures by local governments.

Though Vuon and three of his kin remain under arrest for their role in the attack, retired military generals and a former president have weighed in on his behalf.

The case has attracted so much attention that Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung ordered an investigation, ruling Friday that the eviction was illegal and those who ordered it should be punished. He also encouraged local authorities to renew the family’s land lease.

Many Vietnamese see Vuon as a symbol of the country’s millions of farmers, many of whom are fed up with losing property or anxious about how new land rights laws will affect them as the government debates 20-year land grants that are due to expire next year.

Vuon stands accused of organizing the attack and trying to kill police, but state-run media have openly sympathized with him in investigative reports. Their dispatches have alleged that Hai Phong officials lied about details of the eviction. They also have said the family was cheated in 1993 when they were given a lease of only 14 years instead of what should have been 20 years.

Nguyen Thi Thuong, Vuon’s wife, remembers returning home from dropping her kids at school on Jan. 5 to find a mob of armed police in riot gear surrounding her farm house. She heard gunfire and explosions erupt before ambulances rushed in and medical workers began carrying wounded officers out on stretchers.

“Our family was cornered,” Thuong told The Associated Press by telephone. “We put all our efforts and money into our farm, but the authorities evicted us without compensation. It’s very unjust.”

Even before the standoff, Vuon’s neighbors considered him a local celebrity.

The college-educated agricultural engineer spent 18 years and his life’s savings turning 40 hectares (99 acres) of useless coastal swampland into a viable aquaculture farm. His daughter and nephew drowned in the process, but he pushed on and eventually built dykes capable of protecting the coastline from tropical storms.

Vuon, 49, had long been at odds with local authorities, and some legal experts say his 14-year grant agreement was illegal from the start. State media have reported that the surrounding area was slated to be developed for housing and an international airport.

Vuon and fellow farmer Vu Van Luan filed a lawsuit in 2009 challenging the proposed land seizure. Luan said the court had agreed to let them stay if they dropped the suit. But when they did so, the eviction order went ahead anyway.

That’s when Vuon allegedly planned the attack on more than 100 police and soldiers. According to media reports, he was not at the scene when the violence erupted. The farmer and several members of his family are now under investigation for assault or attempted murder.

After the raid, two houses on the family’s land were burned and bulldozed, forcing Vuon’s wife to take shelter under a plastic tarp. Local officials first took responsibility for the destruction, but later denied involvement — fueling rage among many following the case nationwide who have vented their frustration online.

In Vietnam all land belongs to the state, but sweeping economic reforms in the 1980s led to the 1993 land law that offered conditional 20-year land grants to many farmers. Legal experts say those leases will likely be extended when they expire next year, ensuring farmers quasi-private usage rights. However, other questions hover over clauses in Vietnamese law that allow authorities to seize land for national security or defense, economic development or the public interest.

In some cases, that translates into highways or industrial parks that bring jobs to the poor. But in an increasing number of cases, it means grabbing fish farms or rice paddies for swanky golf courses and resorts only accessible to the rich.

Most farmers accept compensation and move on, but a growing number have been resisting by filing lawsuits, holding protests or, in rare cases, battling police with sticks, stones or weapons.

Millions of Vietnam’s poorest workers struggle to make ends meet as the communist country battles Asia’s highest inflation rate.

Farmers are typically compensated according to the land’s agricultural value, not the amount developers pay. As property values climb and financial stakes increase, land rights disputes are growing “increasingly public and angry,” said Mark Sidel, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin who consults on legal reform in Vietnam.

With popular frustration mounting against “rapacious developers and their allies in local governments,” he added, “Hanoi deals with these disputes with some care.”

And while Vuon’s case alone will likely not push the country into making sweeping changes to its land laws, it also cannot be ignored, especially since more than 70 percent of the country’s 87 million people still live in the countryside.

“Land issues affect the party’s legitimacy because they pit the local power structure against farmers on a playing field that is tilted in favor of the former,” said Carlyle Thayer, a Vietnam expert at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra.

In the Hai Phong case, Vuon’s struggle has won favor with some who see indiscriminate land seizure as a symbol of greed and corruption. A Hanoi-based blogger has raised about 223 million dong ($10,600) for the family’s legal fees, and former President Le Duc Anh has lauded Vuon as a model citizen.

“He should be encouraged, but instead he was evicted,” Anh told Giao Duc (Education) newspaper on Tuesday. “It’s so merciless.”

Vuon’s neighbors now worry they might be next to lose their farms. Prior to the attack in their sleepy seaside fishing community, they had planned to erect a statue in honor of the man who reclaimed swampland and tamed threats that wind and waves once posed to their coastline.

“The villagers considered him a hero,” said Luan, who filed the lawsuit with Vuon.
But now that Vuon is in jail for attempted murder, their plans for the monument have been put on hold.

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In this Jan. 1, 1966 file photo, AP special correspondent George Esper poses with a Vietnamese boy in Quang Ngai Province, south of Da Nang. Esper, the tenacious Associated Press correspondent who refused to leave his post in the last days of the Vietnam War, remaining behind to cover the fall of Saigon, has died. He was 79. Esper died in his sleep on Thursday night, his son, Thomas, told the AP on Friday, Feb. 3, 2012. (AP Photo, file)

George Esper, the tenacious Associated Press correspondent who refused to leave his post in the last days of the Vietnam War, remaining behind to cover the fall of Saigon, has died. He was 79.

Esper died in his sleep on Thursday night, his son, Thomas, told the AP on Friday. Esper suffered from a number of ailments, especially serious heart issues, and less than two weeks ago was released from a rehab center in Braintree, where he had been sent after his latest treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“George was most famous for his journalistic chops, his courage and tenacity, particularly in Vietnam. But those lucky enough to know him will celebrate his enormous generosity and boundless good cheer,” said Kathleen Carroll, AP’s executive editor and senior vice president.

Besides covering stories, Esper mentored young reporters in the AP and aspiring journalists he taught as a college professor.

“Hundreds of journalists learned from him in the field or in the classroom at West Virginia University and his words and his spirit inspire them every day,” Carroll said. “He was a gentleman journalist and we will miss him sorely.”

Esper earned accolades for breaking important stories and logged 10 years in Vietnam, the last two as AP’s bureau chief. He regularly wrote AP’s daily war roundup, a comprehensive story that was a fixture in many American and foreign newspapers.

“He loved traveling the world and getting the story for The Associated Press,” Thomas Esper said. “He was a selfless person who made friends wherever he went.”

While he considered his coverage of the dramatic end of the 15-year Indochina conflict the high point in a 42-year career of deadline reporting, it was far from the only one. Esper was legendary for his dogged persistence in covering news in war and in peace.

“You don’t want to be obnoxious and you don’t want to stalk people, but I think persistence pays off,” Esper said in an interview in 2000.

So when he was assigned to write a story for the 20th anniversary of the 1970 shootings of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent State University and could find no phone number for the mother of one of the victims, Esper drove an hour through a snowstorm to knock on her door.

“She just kind of waved me off, and she said, `We’re not giving any interviews.’ Just like that,” Esper recalled. “I didn’t really push her. On the other hand, I didn’t turn around and leave. I just kind of stood there, wet with snow, dripping wet and cold, and I think she kind of took pity on me.”

Like so many others over the years, she opened up to Esper.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1932, the second youngest of eight children, Esper came from a family of Christian immigrants from Lebanon. The family operated a tavern by railroad tracks and, as a boy, George helped out by tending bar.

He was the first in his family to go to college – West Virginia University in Morgantown.

He tried to become a sports announcer but was fired after two weeks for what his boss called “butchering the English language.” After writing sports for the Uniontown Morning Herald and the Pittsburgh Press, AP hired him in 1958, first in Philadelphia and then in New York.

In 1965, as the U.S. military in Vietnam shifted from an advisory role to deploying full combat divisions, Esper joined AP’s growing Saigon staff. Other than a return to New York for several months in 1966, he stayed to the end.

During that interlude, he covered a long-running public dispute between Jacqueline Kennedy and author William Manchester, whom she had hired to write “The Death of a President,” an authorized account of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Manchester tried hard to avoid the press but complained about “that AP reporter” who seemed able to track him down no matter where he was. It was a foreshadowing of the relentless style that, along with his mastery of Vietnam’s capricious phone systems, would make Esper a press corps legend in Saigon.

Once, hearing that a U.S. jungle firebase was under attack, he managed to punch through by military phone to an officer in the middle of combat. “I can’t talk now. We’re under attack,” the officer yelled into the phone.

The U.S. Military Assistance Command regarded Esper with wariness, respect and even affection. He was relentless. He recalled “pounding them with questions: `Why don’t you know? You should know this. I know you know it.’” After the war, one retired public affairs chief included Esper’s photo in a wall montage of “all the commanders I served under.”

When President Lyndon B. Johnson made a hastily planned trip to Australia in 1967, it was widely assumed he would stop in Vietnam to visit U.S. troops.

Guessing that the coastal base at Cam Ranh Bay was the likely venue, Esper managed to phone the airport control tower, where an officer not only confirmed Johnson’s visit but had tape-recorded his speech. Hours later, the secrecy-bound White House press corps arrived in Bangkok to find the story – their story – already on the AP wire.

Esper found his best stories through perseverance and guile. In December 1972, he landed an exclusive interview with a U.S. Air Force B-52 pilot facing court-martial for refusing to fly missions over North Vietnam. Tracked down in Thailand, the pilot gave Esper the full story. When he later told Esper he had been officially “muzzled” from further comment, Esper reported that, too.

Esper wrote his most memorable story on April 30, 1975, the day the war ended with the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese. He and two other AP reporters declined to join the frantic evacuation of foreigners from Saigon as the North Vietnamese army drove toward the city.

Two North Vietnamese soldiers entered the bureau, accompanied by a longtime freelance photographer for the AP who on that day revealed that he had been a communist spy. He assured the reporters they were safe. Esper offered them Coca Cola and stale cake – the only food on hand – then interviewed the soldiers. Hours later, AP’s communications were abruptly cut, but not before the story got out. The New York Times ran it on its front page.

Esper said afterward he was struck by how similar the young Hanoi soldiers were to the American GIs he had covered.

On his return to the United States, Esper became an AP special correspondent – the news service’s highest writing title – based in Columbus, Ohio, and later in Boston. He covered major stories such as the Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1978 and the 1991 Gulf War.

In 1993, two years after the United States restored diplomatic ties in Indochina, he was chosen to open AP’s first postwar Vietnam bureau in Hanoi and was bureau chief for more than a year.

Esper retired from the AP in 2000 to become a professor of journalism at his alma mater, West Virginia University, where he was beloved by his students.

“He loved his students, who kept him young,” Thomas Esper said.

Esper was a member of the university’s P.I. Reed School of Journalism faculty for more than 10 years.

“He shared his vast professional experience with our students, but more importantly, he was their coach and mentor,” said Maryanne Reed, dean of the journalism school. “Beyond being a dedicated faculty member, George also was a wonderful person who took a personal interest in the lives of his students, colleagues and friends. … They broke the mold when they made George.”

Chris Martin, the vice president of university relations who as dean of the journalism school arranged for Esper to become a professor at his alma mater, said: “I would paraphrase a good friend’s assessment: George Esper was a celebrity who made everyone he met feel like a star. It made him a great reporter but an even greater human being.”

Funeral arrangements are incomplete. Esper’s body was being brought to his hometown in Pennsylvania for burial.

Esper is survived by his ex-wife, Nancy Ha, of Fountain Valley, Calif.; and three sons: Thomas of Wakefield, Mass.; Michael of Brighton, Mass.; and George of Sacramento, Calif.

Continue reading »]]> The United States has said it will not resume adoptions from Vietnam as the country “does not yet have a fully Hague-compliant process in place”.

The announcement was made on Wednesday, the day the Hague Convention came into force in the South-East Asian country, and weeks after Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald said she was satisfied for Ireland to resume adopting from the country again.

Under the Adoption Act 2010, Ireland can only adopt from countries which have ratified the Convention or with which we have a bilateral agreement.

Ireland ceased adopting children from Vietnam in May 2009 after concerns were raised in a Unicef report that the availability of children related more to demand from prospective adoptive parents than to the needs of orphaned children.

The US suspended adoptions from Vietnam in 2008 after it uncovered widespread evidence of baby selling and “baby farming”.

However, the US still believes the country is not “fully Hague-compliant”.

Adoptions from Vietnam to Ireland are likely to resume soon, after both countries reached agreement on a number of issues to ensure that the rights of children are protected.

High-level sources have said the agreement would be “watertight”.

“The best interests of the child have been key to our discussions,” Ms Fitzgerald said last month.

“There is now agreement on all the main issues such as safeguards relating to consent, dealing with central authorities and issues to do with money.”

Ireland adopted 636 children from Vietnam between 1991 and 2008. There were 136 adoptions in 2009, 10 in 2010 and none last year.

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The first Airbus A320 aircraft of VietJet Aviation Joint Stock Co. (VietJet Air) touched down the runway of Tan Son Nhat International Airport on Wednesday, December 14th, less than two weeks ahead of the carrier’s maiden commercial flight.

VietJet Aviation Joint-Stock Co., the budget carrier that began flights in Vietnam last month, may double its fleet to six planes by the end of the year as it lures passengers from bus trips taking as long as 40 hours.

The carrier’s 122-seat Airbus SAS A320s are 90 percent full on its first route, Ho Chi Minh City-Hanoi, said Chief Operating Officer Pritam Singh. The average fare including taxes is 1.03 million dong ($49) one way, according to the airline. That’s about 25 percent less than the cheapest ticket offered on Vietnam Airlines’ website.

VietJet also intends to challenge the state-owned carrier on international services as soon as the third quarter as an economic growth rate that the government expects to reach 6 percent this year spurs travel demand. The number of Vietnamese living in poverty declined to about 11 percent in 2010 from 58 percent in 1993, based on U.S. government figures.

On the Ho Chi Minh City-Hanoi route, a VietJet flight takes about two hours compared with 30 to 42 hours by rail and 34 to 40 hours by bus. A one-way rail trip in mid-February costs 486,000 dong for a hard seat, according to the website of the Hanoi train station. The cheapest ticket on a bus operated by Vinamotor Investment Joint-Stock Co. is about 400,000 dong.

“Many people think an airplane has to be expensive, and that a bus will be much cheaper,” said Singh on Jan. 27 by phone. “We are trying to reach out to this segment, to introduce the idea of using an airline instead.”

VietJet also intends to start services by April to Danang, the biggest city in central Vietnam. A Danang-Ho Chi Minh City bus trip takes about 18 hours, according to bus operator Phuong Trang Investment Joint-Stock Co.

Danang Plans

The carrier, a unit of Hanoi-based Sovico Holdings, flies from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City three times a day. Other operators on the route include Jetstar Pacific Airlines Joint- Stock Aviation Co., a Vietnam Airlines-Qantas Airways Ltd. (QAN) venture, and closely held Mekong Aviation Joint-Stock Co. As the carrier expands overseas, possible destinations may include Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok, Singh said.

The airline, which has leased planes from Kuwait-based Aviation Lease & Finance Co., expects to be profitable by 2014 and it may list on Ho Chi Minh City’s stock exchange within the next few years, Singh said. Losses before the carrier breaks even are expected to exceed $10 million, he said.

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A stack of 2.000 Vnd brand new notes

With the Vietnamese New Year approaching, the scramble for low-denomination currency notes has begun.

People around the country want the bills, crisp and new if possible, to give “lucky money” to children and older people, a traditional custom during Tet just like visiting someone’s home on the first day of the new year, worshipping ancestors, and others.

There are two places for people to get them — banks and the market.

But this year it is not easy for most people to get access to change at the banks.

Representative of a commercial bank in District 1 said volumes of new change of different kinds particularly VND1,000, VND2,000 and VND10,000 were less than last year.

Many banks even had no plan to help customers to change, he added.

Hoang Thuy Ha, a resident of Tan Binh District in HCM City said: “To get change, I deposited money in a bank, and withdrew it after one or two days.”

Shops selling these small bills are usually located near pagodas.

They have new bills of all value but demand 10-50 per cent commission for the money, according to Tran Quynh Nga of District 3.

This year websites selling low-value currency notes have sprung up making it easy for people to buy it.

Phan Thuc Tran of Binh Thanh District said: “Perhaps because of the fierce competition internet sellers demand between 3 and 5 per cent [commission].”

Nguyen Thi Minh Huong, who sells change online, said she was getting more orders compared to last year.

“At this time people are busy. Buying online can help people save time and money, so this method is preferred by more and more people.”

Some people want local authorities to set up points that sell small bills at a reasonable commission to ensure people are not fleeced.