Contract breach topics

The police have recommended that Duong Tan Hau, 29, a Vietnam Airlines attendant, to be charged for "spreading dangerous infectious diseases in humans." Hau breached regulations when staying at the airline’s quarantine facility and after returning home for designated self-isolation. His irresponsibility triggered a community outbreak of the novel coronavirus, according to police. He had returned to Vietnam from Japan on Nov. 14 and was quarantined for four days at a facility managed by Vietnam Airlines in HCMC's Tan Binh District. While there, Hau broke the rules by visiting another quarantine area and ended up contracting the virus from another crew member who had returned from Romania. As per Vietnam’s protocols on Covid-19 prevention, pilots and attendants need to use dedicated restrooms and their own vehicles once off the plane. No contact is allowed with passengers during flights. After two tests showed he was negative for the novel coronavirus, Hau was released from the airline’s facility, but told to isolate himself at home for another 14 days. At home, Hau came in contact with his mother and two friends, including a visiting English language teacher. On Nov. 29, 15 days after he returned from Japan, he tested positive for the virus, with the teacher following suit the next day. The latter later infected a nephew and a student. The outbreak broke Vietnam's 89-day and HCMC's 120-day streak without community transmissions at the time. Hau was placed under criminal investigation for his actions on Jan. 11, and is held under house arrest. Authorities concluded Hau’s actions had resulted in around VND4.475 billion in damage, including the cost for Covid-19 testing, contact tracing and isolation. The lives of over 2,000 people in HCMC were also affected by quarantine measures. Hau is the first case in Vietnam where flouting Covid-19 prevention regulations is treated as a crime, but he was not the last. Two others, a man in Mekong Delta’s Vinh …

[Read more...] about $193,800 in damage caused by HCMC flight attendant breaching Covid-19 protocols

In a proposal submitted to the city, the metro operator, the HCMC Management Authority for Urban Railways (MAUR), said it has agreed with the metro consultancy, NJPT, a consortium led by Japan's Nippon Koei, that the chief expert would be paid 2.5 million yen a month and the rest 2.35 million yen. It said these are the lowest salaries for the jobs as set in the contract. They are comparable with the salaries agreed for the mass rapid transit project in Jakarta, it said. Vietnamese experts involved in training engineers will be paid differently, but the details have not been disclosed. In January a school that was training 58 engineers for the metro announced it had put the course on hold citing non-payment of its fees by MAUR. The 15-month training, at Hanoi's Vietnam Railway College in collaboration with NJPT, had begun last July. The trainees, including one woman, are aged 21-35. It appears that payments to teachers and the school can only be made if appendix No.19 to a 2007 contract between MAUR and NJPT is signed, and that requires the city to approve the engineers’ salaries. The contract envisaged completion of the line in 2015. Numerous setbacks that caused delays have pushed the project’s completion to next year. The long delay also forced the two parties to add 19 appendixes to the contract. The 19.7-kilometer route from Ben Thanh Market in District 1 to Suoi Tien Theme Park in District 9 will have 17 Japanese-made trains operating. To cost VND43.7 trillion ($1.89 billion), it has seen 82 percent of the work completed against a targeted 85 percent. MAUR has blamed the delay on Japanese and European engineers installing the tracks being unable to enter Vietnam last year after international flights were suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic. …

[Read more...] about $23,000 salary sought for foreign experts training HCMC metro engineers

In June last year, Ngo Dinh Vuong halted the operation of his garment factory in Quang Minh Industrial Park in Hanoi’s Dong Anh District due to the health crisis. The factory was opened in late 2018 and is the third to have been opened by Vuong in the northern region of the country since 2016. Then in July, the second factory, based in Hung Yen Province, faced the same plight, leaving the first factory operating moderately also in Hung Yen. The three factories are managed by Hoang Yen Garment and Trading JSC, established in 2016, where Vuong is the director. However, in early January, the two factories with halted operations began resuming operations as some big contracts have been landed with local and foreign experts. This would allow 800 workers to have incomes. “We are happy that all of our three factories are in full operations now,” Vuong told Nhan dan Online. Hoang Yen Company’s case is among more than 11,000 enterprises resuming operation in the first two months of this year nationwide. According to the General Statistics Office (GSO), also in the first two months of 2021, the economy saw 18,100 newly-established enterprises with total registered capital of VND334.8 trillion (US$14.55 billion), employing 172,800 new labourers – up 4% in the number of enterprises, 52.2% in capital, and 9.7% in the number of labourers as compared to those in the same period of last year. In particular, the average registered capital of each newly-established business in the two months of the year is VND18.5 billion (US$804,347), up 46.4% year-on-year. If an additional VND385.6 trillion (US$16.76 billion) registered by 6,500 operational enterprises is included, the total registered capital inserted into the economy in the first two months is VND720.4 trillion ($31.32 billion). In February, despite the Lunar New Year, the number of newly-established firms hit more than 8,000 registered at VND179.7 trillion (US$7.81 billion), down 20.3% in the number of enterprises …

[Read more...] about Health crisis fails to impede business confidence