Vietnam - Audacious but unconvincing

Since new Transport Minister Dinh La Thang took office around two months ago, he has been in the forefront of pushing for behavior change in society.

He is a rare type of minister who, immediately after the start of his term, rolled up his sleeves to challenge the status quo so as to breathe new life into the scandal-plagued transport sector, instead of waiting and seeing like other new ministers.

His audacious actions and proposals revolving around issues of public interest have sparked heated debate about pros and cons, including firing the chief supervisor of a Danang airport upgrade project, suggesting a ban on vehicles on main streets in Hanoi and HCMC, recommending a burn-down of motorcycles confiscated in illegal races and an adjustment of office and school schedules to cope with traffic congestion, and mostly recently prohibiting his senior staff from playing golf.

What has been reflected in local media is clearly a seal of approval of his can-do attitude. But all of his proposals are intrinsically controversial; the level of controversy intensifies after each of his successive moves.

He heaped praised when he dismissed the chief supervisor of the project to build a new terminal at the Danang International Airport due to the delays which he could not tolerate any longer. His tough action on project delays made big headlines in local media.

Building on that success, he then forayed into another tough domain: traffic congestion. Taking to the street in Hanoi and HCMC, the nation’s two biggest cities, is indeed nightmarish. Hanoi authorities are struggling with a scheme to do away with a traffic mess but to no avail. HCMC is working on a plan to charge vehicles entering main streets in the downtown area in a bid to reduce traffic but this mission seems hard to accomplish in the foreseeable future.

So when he floated an idea of banning vehicles in main streets in Hanoi and HCMC, he won the hearts and minds of people who are already fed up with worsening traffic jams in the two cities. For those people, doing something is better than doing nothing about this chronic problem. But others are concerned about the feasibility of his suggested measure because it will not work before surrogate means of transport such as mass rapid transit are put in place.

Some people also sympathize with his stern proposal to incinerate all motorcycles confiscated in illegal races on the streets. Despite the police’s tough stance on illegal motorcycle races, huge crowds of daredevil youngsters still enthusiastically participate in such life-threatening races in Hanoi and HCMC. But the police chief of Hanoi said this suggested measure would cause a waste of property for society.

During peak hours, especially when schools, offices and factories finish at the same time, traffic is further snarled, making it harder for vehicles to move an inch. So when Minister Thang suggested changing school and office hours, there were mixed reactions in disfavor of his idea because this is not at all new. In the past, Hanoi and HCMC did just that but unsuccessfully.

Thang’s above proposals have unambiguously stirred controversy. But his imposing a golf-playing ban on leaders of the ministry’s departments upwards and of the state-owned enterprises under the ministry is perhaps the most questionable proposal he has made ever since the former chairman of Vietnamese oil and gas giant PetroVietnam took up the new post of transport minister.

In response to a Tuoi Tre newspaper article about Thang’s written golf-playing prohibition on Thursday, some readers of the paper’s online version threw support behind the minister’s action, questioning how officials with decent wages could manage to embrace a sport for the rich.

“I approve of the ban in the ministry. The question is how government officials, including those holding the post of minister, can use up their salaries and allowances to play a round of golf in a day. Vietnam is feeling the severe impact of the global crisis, so it’s necessary to deal with the core of the issue: corruption,” a Tuoi Tre reader identified as Nguyen Hien said in a comment.

While pitching his golf ban on the board chairmen, vice chairmen, directors/general directors, and vice directors/general directors of state-owned companies under the ministry, and leaders of the ministry’s departments or higher, Minister Thang warns of officials’ rampant neglect of work. One of the main reasons for this is officials spend too much time at golf courses, he is quoted by the online paper VietnamNet.

However, many have expressed concern over the measure, saying it violates his staff’s privacy since the ban is even applicable on weekends and holidays. The minister admits playing golf is good but while the country is experiencing an unprecedentedly difficult time, officials need to focus their time and energy on urgent work. Regarding staff’s privacy, Thang reasons this is an internal rule for the transport sector, so it is legitimate and no one losses their freedom.

Yet, the online paper of Voice of Vietnam (VOV) radio station argues the minister has gone too far because he intervenes in staff’s privacy outside the office, and worse still, the ministry’s personnel chief, Pham Tang Loc, says, “We will secretly monitor what officials do.”

The Ministry of Justice’s legal documents scrutiny department chief, Le Hong Son, even points out that the transport minister has no authorization to issue such a ban.

The minister seems to have taken a shortcut to resolve a myriad of pressing issues but the measures he has proposed over the past two months are not compelling enough, says VOV.

Pham Vu - The Saigon Times Daily

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