Criminals have recently taken to buying air tickets online using stolen credit card numbers in order to resell them.

But would-be travelers duped into buying the tickets are then not allowed to fly by the airlines.

Credit cards are still a new service in Vietnam and it’s probably a reason why Viet kieu (overseas Vietnamese) criminal gangs want to exploit it.

There are now many airlines selling tickets online, including Vietnam Airlines, Jetstar Pacific and Cathay Pacific, but customers must have a credit card to buy over the Internet.

After online purchases are completed, card holders will receive a payment request from their banks about a month later.

The delay in payment is the key element to this kind of crime.

After stealing credit card numbers, the criminals will use them to buy tickets online. In order to make it easier, they often choose to buy tickets from new and inexperienced ticket agencies that are not authorized by airlines. They will then offer ticket agencies their tickets at lower prices. Exchanges are mainly done via the Internet.

Tickets purchased by stolen credit card numbers will be delivered to the agencies and then sold to local customers at around 20 percent lower than official prices. Both ticket agencies and passengers can be easily cheated as they think it’s a good bargain.

Moreover, the criminals are able to offer tickets even during high season as they are “willing” to buy business class tickets and then sell them at economy class prices.

The criminals often used stolen credit card numbers to buy tickets only a few days before the flight to make sure card holders have not received their credit statement. But sooner or later card holders will know and refuse to pay for the tickets.

Hopefully this letter will help passengers know about the crime and avoid being cheated.

To prevent people from buying license plates with so dep – beautiful numbers that are easy to remember (and have other advantages, as you will see soon), transport authorities have been using a purportedly automatic system that assigns numbers at random.

How random is it that the “beautiful” license plates that go down the street are always behind expensive vehicles?

Look around. If you see five expensive cars, the chances are that each one of them will bear number plates with just one digit - 3333 or 7777.

We are to believe that the owner was randomly lucky each of those five times.

It is obvious that no automatic system issued these numbers at random.

So, why don’t we just offer all the “beautiful number” plates for auction? It will bring a lot of money to the state budget, at least enough to build thousands of houses for poor people.

Many vehicle owners buy these number plates not only because they believe in luck but they want to show off their wealth or their close relationship with officials who issue the plates so that traffic police are not too keen on stopping them on the street for minor infractions or the random checks they are supposed to carry out.

These “beautiful” people want to highlight their “higher” status. Many travelers feel uncomfortable seeing these expensive plates.

The license numbering system is intended to be fair and transparent to everyone. But it has, very obviously, failed. What it has made transparent are some ugly facts about our society. The question is: What are we going to do about it?

By Nguyen The Thinh

Vietnam was proud and happy when the Can Tho Bridge opened and became the world’s seventh longest cable-stayed bridge around two weeks ago.

But many people living around the bridge’s feet now regret it as visitors who are eager to see the bridge have been dumping garbage on them every day.

The road leading to the foot of the bridge on the side of Vinh Long Province is full of food waste, styrofoam packs that must have contained rice or other food, and empty bottles.

Le Thi Phuong, living under the bridge, has to wear a helmet when cooking (Photo by Thanh Dung)

More than a hundred people live in the area. Most of the houses are tin-roofed and they are unable to sleep with the garbage falling like bombs from 23-25 meters high.

A local named Nguyen Van Sa Ngot said he suffered a headache every night as the garbage sounded like someone playing drums loudly on his roof. Ngot has taken his mother to a relative’s house elsewhere after a coconut shell went through his roof and almost hit her when sleeping.

Sometimes, some young men on the bridge got excited and threw their shoes or slippers down. They even urinated from atop the bridge.

Some threw cigarette butts into an area full of dry vegetation and houses made with coconut leaves.

As living under the bridge, people here know they will be relocated someday, so they didn’t intend to build firm homes.

Le Thi Phuong, another local, said she had to wear a helmet when cooking.

Phuong said she and her neighbors received garbage constantly from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. as people gathered around the bridge to get some cool air and ended up having picnics there.

Children in the area are no longer allowed to play outdoors. Adults who want to sit outside have to choose a spot that is safe from falling objects.

Some locals have moved out and only return to clear their roofs of garbage.

Some locals have thought of filing a lawsuit but others have dissuaded them saying it will not be effective.

The residents cannot keep watch on the bridge around the clock to prevent people from throwing waste. It is near impossible to prevent littering from the bridge.

So the only possible solution depends on the visitors. They should just enjoy the view and throw nothing.

The bridge linking Vinh Long and Can Tho City is supposed to be a sign of our great development. The garbage dumping is proving the opposite.

Residents in Vietnam raise their arms to the sky and moan “Blackout!” every dry season.

It’s dry, it’s hot and the demand for power surges. But power suppliers have never satisfied demand as authorities never managed or bothered to estimate how much power people would need. So the blackouts have continued, as a matter of course, for at least a decade.

Nguyen Tan Thuy, a Thanh Nien reader from Quang Nam Province in the central region, where many hydropower plants have been set up, calls that the “paradox” between supply and demand.

Also, power supply in Vietnam depends too much on hydropower plants, whose dams dry out every dry season. Some hydropower plants only have enough water to operate for a couple of hours a day.

So the government allows power firms to cut power frequently every dry season. It simply refers to power shortages in the dry season as an inevitable difficulty and asks residents to show some sympathy.

Deputy minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Nam Hai once said “I have heard complaints from provinces about frequent blackouts.”

But he dismissed the troubles as unavoidable “difficulties.”

Hoang Thanh, another Thanh Nien reader, said the deputy sounded “detached” from residents.

Thanh said his area in the northern province of Lang Son has been disconnected from the power supply more than ten hours a day for nearly three months due to the “frequent blackout” policy, which aims to save power in the dry season.

Many rural and mountainous areas around the northern region share Thanh’s plight. People live in misery. Children get sick in the heat and poor families have to spend all their money on batteries.

We keep hanging banners about industrialization and modernization. Then how come people have to eat in darkness and businesses don’t have power for production?

Thanh said his shop, which lets people use the Internet for hourly fees, has been closed for nearly three months due to the “frequent blackouts.”

Very few people in the rural and mountainous areas have their personal PC connected to the Internet. They would go to Internet shops when necessary.

Power suppliers operate on the state budget, including taxes paid by residents. But they didn’t try to invest the money in upgrading facilities or switching to solar or wind power to supply the power residents need. They invest in other fields instead, such as telecommunications or financing, none of which has ever worked well.

“We need to destroy the monopoly system in power supply and we need to do that right away,” said resident Tran Minh Duc from the northern province of Tuyen Quang.

Vietnam has so far been supplied power by the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), which is the parent of city/provincial power firms.

Residents and National Assembly representatives have been complaining that the monopoly system enables EVN behave with impunity in any manner it likes.

Hanoi was once again under water after a torrential downpour lasting three hours on Tuesday morning, and three people were allegedly killed by electric leakage during the flooding.

Do Xuan Anh, director of Hanoi’s Department of Construction, told the press on the sidelines of a meeting of the city’s People’s Council (legislative body) that day they had done all they could to lessen the chances that the capital city is flooded during heavy rains in the coming years.

But is the problem really out of their hands now?

In 1998, Hanoi launched a project to improve drainage systems in the central part of the city, based on a plan drafted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) three years before.

Now in its second phase, the US$550 million project is being implemented in accordance with JICA’s plan without concerned agencies’ considering drastic changes in its urban zoning plan.

The costly and long-lasting project, in fact, is restricted to areas around the To Lich and Red rivers, while the city is being developed towards the west. Therefore, it does not target new urban areas like My Dinh, Trung Hoa – Nhan Chinh, Dinh Cong, and Linh Dam.

If local agencies keep working on urban plans in isolation without considering other factors that affect the city’s future, or keep developing urban areas without improving infrastructure including drainage systems, as people have pointed out, the city will never escape from floods when it rains.

This status-quo will remain despite additional investments worth a fortune, if the planning itself is skewed.

And historic floods of the scale that killed 17 people and submerged many streets and houses in up to two meters of water in 2008 will also be unavoidable.

Related agencies should secure space for pedestrians on sidewalks in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi before enforcing the latest traffic law.

Under Decree No.34 that takes effect from May 20, pedestrians will be fined VND40,000-80,000 (US$2.1- 4.2) for violations, including walking in the streets, in the centers of the country’s major cities.

But, how is the law to be enforced when many of the sidewalks in the two cities are now used for parking and business purposes?

Last year, the authorities in HCMC allowed sidewalks on certain streets to be rented out for businesses and parking.

This decision to rent out sidewalks benefits the city’s budget and the local people.

However, it affects pedestrians who should have priority in using sidewalks. In some cases, the entire sidewalk has been taken up for commercial purposes, despite the city’s ban on doing so, leaving no room for walking.

The same situation is also happening in the capital, which started charging fees for using sidewalks and streets for businesses and parking three years ago.

Is it reasonable to fine people who walk in the streets because sidewalks are being taken over for commercial purposes?

Shouldn’t those concerned enforce strict regulations on renting out sidewalks with heavy fines imposed on those not staying within limits, before enforcing this new traffic law on pedestrians?

Beautiful beaches in the central city of Da Nang are being officially called by a name nonsensically imposed on us by US soldiers who invaded our country.

What’s worse, the misnomer makes it seem as if this beautiful coastline isn’t even ours: China Beach.

Local authorities and tourism agencies have displayed breathtaking ignorance and apathy on the issue.

Brochures for the Non Nuoc Resort (Sandy Beach Resort) call Non Nuoc Beach, one of Da Nang’s most famous beaches, China Beach. The traditional Vietnamese name is already beautiful, meaning Mountain and Water, as Da Nang is where central Vietnam’s famous rolling hills meet the sea.

Why do we need to corrupt the place by naming it after a northern neighbor who also spent over a thousand years invading our country?

Businesses have taken to rewriting history as well, by naming their establishments things like China Beach Bar.

Da Nang tourism website like ToursVietnam.net, VietnamOpentours, and VN gold.com also refer to several strips of beach around Da Nang as “China Beach.”

Mai Dang Quang Duc, director general of Ben Thanh – Non Nuoc Corporation, said the company which they contracted to manage the Nuoc Non Resort used the name because it was commonly known among foreigners.

Although the corporation has been aware that the name China Beach had been used for at least 7 years, it didn’t ask the company to change it because it was simple and convenient, according to Duc. He said they had never once received any warnings from local authorities about using the defiling name.

Duc attributed the use of China Beach partly to the fact that the management company was headed by a Malaysian man who probably didn’t know about the name’s origin.

However, recently the corporation has stopped using the name China Beach in emails and documents after receiving complaints from tourists.

In the meantime, Luong Minh Sam, director of Danang Department of Foreign Affairs, said that he had already ordered related agencies and hotels to remove the name from all documents when he was at the helm of Da Nang Tourism Department.

Ngo Quang Vinh, director of Da Nang Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, also said they always forbade the use of the name and that they would ask Non Nuoc Resort to “strictly” follow the order.

On the other hand, a professor who wished to remain anonymous said it was unreasonable that China Beach was used as an official name at many companies and hotels for years without local authorities so much as batting an eye.

“No Vietnamese can accept that a Vietnamese beach is named China beach,” he said.

Bus stations in Ho Chi Minh City said their public washrooms are wasted on the public as many passengers and drivers prefer to answer nature’s call in the open.

“Many people relieve themselves right outside the toilets and some of them even go for a number two,” said a woman who takes care of the washrooms at Mien Dong Bus Station in Binh Thanh District.

Nguyen Ngoc Thua, manager of the station, admitted that the issue is a serious one. “Some people are just ignorant and defecate in the shower area of the washrooms.”

“This is grave as it damages the image of the station and the whole city,” he said. “We are at our wits’ end. Measures have been taken but even after violators are fined, there will be more that do the same.”

According to Mien Dong Bus Station, more than 100 bus drivers and their assistants, and 1,100 passengers have been fined by local police for “urinating outside regulated places” since mid 2007.

But many readers have written to Thanh Nien saying that although such violations are unacceptable, passengers and drivers are not entirely to blame.

Public washrooms in the city are often filthy and poorly equipped and many residents tend to choose to either restrain themselves or simply sneak behind a bush, a wall or a bus. Also, many toilets at bus stations have become ghettoes for drug addicts.

“I had to use the washrooms at bus stations several times,” a reader who wished to remain unnamed wrote in an email. “I found them very dirty and the staff’s behavior was bad. They also charged arbitrarily, sometimes VND500 per use but sometimes VND1,000-2,000.”

“In my opinion, people should not be charged when they need to use toilets, and bus stations should find funds from elsewhere to maintain their washrooms,” she wrote.

“I was asked to pay VND4,000 to go to the toilet,” another reader wrote to Thanh Nien. “You charge people that amount of money and you give them a filthy toilet; it’s like you are encouraging people to relieve themselves outdoors.”

Quynh Vy of Go Vap District was of the same opinion, saying that if you charge toilet users, you have to make sure that toilets are clean and properly equipped.

Vietnam is planning mega projects worth billions of dollars, but we seem to forget about small ones that are a matter of life and death for many residents.

A small bridge crossing the Po Ko River in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum is not a priority, so over 60 residents of Dak Ang Commune are left in the lurch.

They have no choice but to go to school, workplace and markets by sliding across a 150-meter-long cable with a pulley that each individual carries.

This happens at a height of 20 meters over fast flowing waters of the river, making it equivalent to a feat typically performed by acrobats in circuses. That the residents of the two communes have been using this dangerous cable system for eight months after a chain bridge was swept away by floods is a sad commentary on the state of affairs.

Local children, including primary school pupils, have no other way to get to school but to use the cable and pulley system.

Isn’t it time for us to concentrate more on building a bridge to protect the lives of several dozen people, including children who persist in going to school despite the obvious dangers?

Despite graduating from universities with good grades, Vietnamese students are always criticized for lacking practical skills.

This issue has long been considered one of the big shortcomings of the country’s education system, despite educators’ recent efforts to reform it.

At a recent meeting discussing the training and recruitment of staff for the finance and accounting field in Hanoi, Trinh Quang Anh, director of Maritime Bank Training Center, said 43 percent of his staff held Masters degrees, while the others had university degrees.

However, according to Anh, they are equipped with too much academic knowledge and not enough practical skills, so it ends up they can’t apply their knowledge when doing their jobs.

Meanwhile, Bui Thu Trang, manager of Comin Vietnam’s Finance and Administration Department, blamed schools for failing to design reasonable training programs.

For instance, students majoring in finance and banking are required to complete only 39 credits of their majors out of a total of 135 credits, she cited.

This means students learn about their majors for around one year in a four-year course, Trang said.

Not to mention that the skills of a Masters degree holder graduating from one of Vietnam’s leading economics schools fall below the requirements set by an international institute of accounting and auditing training, the manager stressed.

But it’s not solely the fault of the education system.

Dang Van Thanh, the dean of Hanoi University of Business and Technology’s Accounting Department, said between 70-80 percent of the school’s students were refused internships from companies.

He said some students who were granted an internship mainly did jobs like making tea and cleaning and that they received almost no instruction or practical knowledge from companies.

Businesses are the ones who need to recruit students, so they are supposed to take part in training them, the dean said.

It’s time the two parties came together to solve the problem effectively, or the education system will keep on struggling in vain, while companies continue to suffer from a lack of good human resources.

Criminals don’t seem to worry much in Vietnam. They think they can use money and/or violence to get away with any crime.

The public was shocked to learn that 14-year-old Nguyen Hoang Anh had been tortured by his employers at a shrimp farm in the southern province of Ca Mau for over a year without local authorities noticing.

Huynh Thanh Giang and his wife, Ma Ngoc Thom, imposed medieval torture and punishments within their house, and then did it more openly.

When local police and authorities came to their house after they were tipped off by neighbors, they wrote a report.

The wife was quoted by an official as saying: “It’s up to us whether he stays here or whether he leaves.

“You can write the report, but I won’t sign it. [I can] tear it up, and hundreds of millions of dong can settle anything.”

Nguyen Thanh Binh, head of Ngoc Chanh Commune, which manages the hamlet where the crimes occurred, said the couple even asked him to help them get away their crimes, saying that they would pay him after things were settled.

Local people in the neighborhood, meanwhile, said they didn’t dare to alarm police, because the couple had threatened to have gangsters punish them when they had other conflicts.

The same story was heard two years ago when Nguyen Thi Binh, 24, was found being tortured and enslaved by her employers for 13 years at a pho restaurant in the middle of Hanoi.

Local people and the restaurant’s customers all knew about the maltreatment. But, once again, they didn’t dare to interfere in, saying they were afraid the restaurant owners might take revenge.

It wasn’t until one of her neighbors rescued the girl, hid her and then informed police that she was finally saved.

In another case, Ngo Quang Truong, director of real estate investor Hoang Hai Ltd. in Ho Chi Minh City’s Hoc Mon District, was arrested last November on charges of fraud and for allegedly hiring contract killers to take out Dang Xuan Si, his deputy who had blown the whistle on his fraudulent land dealings.

These are only a few examples of people who thinking they can solve problems via money and/or violence.

If authorities don’t find a way to eradicate this kind of thinking, more and more evil acts will take place with more cruelty.

We have to wonder what people working for government agencies think their job is.

Is it to help people in need or to wring their hands and say, “Sorry, we don’t know what to do,” or “Sorry, we cannot do anything”?

Farmers in the southern province of Dong Nai were faced with this wringing of hands recently.

Over 80 tons of fish have died from pollution of the Dong Nai River since early this month, but so far, local agencies are yet to identify the culprits, and in fact, are saying they cannot do so.

In a report to the provincial authorities on June 21, the Dong Nai Department of Natural Resources and Environment said wastewater discharged into the Dong Nai River by households and the Bien Hoa Industrial Zone No.1 had killed the fish.

The department said it was not easy to trace the wrongdoer given that the river received wastewater from multiple sources.

However, affected residents were not ready to accept this excuse and took matters into their own hands. They began collecting evidence by themselves.

 Nguyen Duc Can, a representative of farmers breeding fish in cages in the Dong Nai River in Thong Nhat Ward, said on June 24 that he and some other local residents found the water foamy and stinking on a section of the river. They followed the stench and found untreated wastewater being discharged by the Tan Mai Paper Factory.

They filmed the discharge of wastewater and took samples for testing with the help of a student of the Ho Chi Minh City Nong Lam University who was working as an apprentice in the neighborhood.

A lab in HCMC has agreed to test the farmers’ samples and will release results next week, Can said.

“If tests conclude that the Tan Mai Paper Factory’s wastewater killed our fish, we’ll fight for compensation to the bitter end,” he added.

Isn’t it unreasonable that management agencies with specialized equipment and experts leave the job for farmers to do? Farmers who have already suffered heavy losses?

Government agencies should lend a strong helping hand to those in distress, not leave them in the lurch to fend for themselves.

It’s time for Hanoi’s Kinderfest.

Every July, for the past five years, parents with children between the ages of three and six drag out stools, paper fans, newspapers for the long night ahead.

Hammocks bind trees in front of the kindergartens like fat telephone wires, broadcasting the event.

Parents and grandparents have to take turns lining up from dawn to dusk to secure a place for their little ones. Octogenarians begin elbowing septuagenarians out of the way the minute the schools start distributing applications.

It’s such a common story that Hanoi’s education department seems to consider it something of a rite of passage. They haven’t addressed it for years.

“I’m upset that Hanoi is planning many big projects, but across the city people are distressed about getting a proper place at school for their children,” said a grandpa of

Parents queue up outside a kindergarten in Hanoi for application forms for their children four who said he has followed the “annual practice” for the past four years.

The Department of Education has said that public kindergartens only meet around 50 percent of local demand. Six wards in the city center lack public kindergartens altogether.

But anyone in line for the kinderfest could tell you that.

What they want to know is when and how such a practice will come to an end in a city with the country’s leading educational performance.