Jail woman costume

Minister of Home Affairs Phạm Thị Thanh Trà. —VNA/VNS Photo

Phạm Thị Thanh Trà, the first female Minister of Home Affairs, speaks to Vietnam News Agency about her thoughts and feelings after her appointment

First of all, I would like to congratulate you as the first female Minister of Home Affairs. How do you feel right now?

It is a great honour but also a heavy responsibility for me after the National Assembly passed a resolution approving the Prime Minister’s proposal to appoint 12 ministers, including me.

I will make great efforts together with the ministry’s Party Committee and the ministry’s officials to boost the sector’s development and meeting the tasks set. I felt quite emotional when I became the first female minister of Home Affairs. This requires me to try my best to continue developing the sector as the previous leaders did.

As one of the two female members of the Government, what advantages and disadvantages will you have?

The first advantage is that the Resolution of the Party’s XIII Congress has clearly defined the goals, directions and tasks to develop the country and the sector.

I think the directions were very clear, like the road has been opened ahead. The thing that I have to do is carry on that road in the correct way to reach the destination.

Another advantage is the previous leaders of the sector have created a strong foundation for future development.

As a woman, I will definitely receive the attention, support and encouragement from other women when doing my job.

There is also support from other officials and staff of the sector. All of this will give me motivation and confidence to overcome any disadvantages and complete the assigned tasks.

Being the head of a multi-sectoral ministry, what priorities do you set for yourself?

The Ministry of Home Affairs is a multi-sectoral ministry with difficult and sensitive work. There will be pressure but I am ready to tackle it.

When I served as Deputy Minister of Home Affairs since October 2020, my predecessor Lê Vĩnh Tân had shared and helped me a lot in handling my tasks. Tân is very enthusiastic and dedicated to his work. He has contributed much to the sector’s development over the past five years.

The future tasks of the sector are very challenging. The first thing to do is to thoroughly grasp the spirit of the Resolution of the XIII Congress of the Party and implement the tasks synchronously.

The first task is focusing on consulting to improve the institution and build a State administration that is democratic, modern, professional, disciplined, public and transparent to serve the people and achieve our goals.

The second task is promoting administrative reform to make a breakthrough for the period of 2021-26 in order to fix shortcomings and create motivation for the country’s development.

The third is streamlining administrative apparatus, including re-arranging units at district and commune levels. Previously, the ministry made initial steps and got some results. Now, it is the stage of implementing very drastically on this matter.

The fourth is downsizing the workforce of the sector, paying attention to discovering, fostering and appreciating talented people. This is also one of the contents specifically stated by the Resolution of the XIII Congress of the Party so that we could concentrate on building a team of civil servants that are professional, responsible, dynamic and people-centred.

The final task is perfecting decentralisation mechanisms in State management in every aspect of the sector, identifying clearly functions of each unit, responsibility of each officer and member of staff; as well as conducting more inspections to improve the quality and efficiency of State management.

You already worked as the head of a province for a long time, how will you apply your experiences in the role of a minister?

I have experience in many fields, including home affairs, after working as a female head of a province for many years. I also have accumulated experience in leadership and management.

When I held the position of Secretary of Yên Bái Province’s Party Committee, the province strongly implemented five aspects related to home affairs, especially the success in arranging organisational apparatus, administrative reform and decentralisation mechanism.

These are good experiences and valuable lessons to help me perform well as the head of the ministry. — VNS

Overview of Kon Ko Tu community-based tourism village. — Photo hovi.vn

The village is located on the banks of the Đăk Bla River and is one of the oldest villages in Kon Tum City in the province of the same name.

Coming here, we admired the Rong long house soaring in the blue sky which is a community house for the common activities of villagers such as meetings, festivals, or welcoming, and also immersed ourselves in xoang dances, participated in hand-loom weaving and danced with the people to the sound of gongs.

On the way, we saw the winding paths along the legendary Đăk Bla River. The two sides of the road to the village are full of pink grass. In the distance are sandy beaches adorned with light purple sugarcane mixed with overlapping mountains to create a peaceful village scene.

Entering the village, we felt a peace different from the noisy life outside. The fun and refreshing laughter of the children mixed with the sound of weaving and the sound of carving statues to create a beautiful old village.

Currently, Kon Ko Tu Village has 92 households with 530 Ba Na people. Because the village was formed very early, it still retains its ancient, wild and majestic natural beauty.

Standing in Kon Ko Tu and looking to the east, we could see the top of Kong Muk Mountain reflected on the Đăk Bla River. About 5km along the bank of the river is a flat, sandy beach that embraces the ancient village like a mother holding her child in her heart.

Pristine architecture

Although it is the oldest village in the city, Kon Ko Tu still retains the pristine beauty of a Ba Na village.

Surrounding the long communal house is a system of stilt houses facing the south as in the local traditions, this is a favourable direction to improve the luck and lives of the villagers.

The village still has more than 20 stilt houses built in the traditional style. A Ba Na stilt house is characterised by a rectangular model with an average length of about 10m. Each house consists of 12 pillars and is divided equally by six pillars on each side to create stability and balance for the house. The Ba Na often set up pillars of houses made of various kinds of wood. The stairs of the house are usually made of wood and meticulously carved.

Rong long house, the symbol of Kon Ko Tu community-based tourism village. — VNA/VNS Photo Du Toan

In the long stilt houses, there will usually be three to four generations of the Ba Na living together.

The Kon Ko Tu villagers are very hospitable. In addition to cultural exchange and getting acquainted with folk songs and traditional musical instruments of gongs, we participated in the new rice festival.

In the afternoon, we rented boats to admire the romantic Đăk Bla River and enjoy the clear, fresh air of the mountains and rivers here.

At night, we enjoyed rượu cần (wine drunk out of a jar through pipes) of the Ba Na people and heard them talk about their lives, as well as the cultural customs in the region. And of course, we enjoyed the local food like fried forest bamboo shoots, grilled chicken with salt and pepper and river fish.

The Kon Ko Tu community-based tourism village just debuted in July last year.

According to Kon Ko Tu villager A Kam, local tourism has grown in recent years but local people were mostly disorganised. After the People’s Committee of Kon Tum City launched a project to support the development of community-based tourism in villages last year, tourism in the locality has developed even further.

A woman weaves brocade at Kon Ko Tu community-based tourism village. — Photo kontumcity.kontum.gov.vn

With the support of the municipal People’s Committee and preferential loans, many households have invested in building and upgrading houses, rooms and campuses. They have also offered new kinds of tours with different experiences to attract tourists.

With the unique architecture and cultural features of the Ba Na, Kon Ko Tu Village is an attractive destination in Kon Tum.

VNS

Two Vietnamese people who recently returned from Qatar and Japan have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, raising the total number of patients in the country to 2,707, the Ministry of Health reported on Tuesday morning.

According to the ministry’s report, the two new patients include a 37-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman who recently returned from Qatar and Japan to Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport.

They were sent to a local quarantine area upon arrival and tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on April 12. The two patients are now being treated at the Cu Chi Field Hospital for Covid-19 patients.

With these new infection cases, the number of Covid-19 patients in Vietnam has increased to 2,707, including 910 locally-transmitted cases reported since the new outbreak started in Hai Duong on January 28.

As of 6 pm on April 12, a total of 2,445 Covid-19 patients had recovered and been discharged from hospital. There have been 35 deaths, most of them being the elderly with serious underlying diseases.

At present, nearly 37,000 people who had close contact with Covid-19 patients or returned from virus-hit areas are being monitored at hospitals, quarantine facilities, and at home.

Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra

Great honor, heavy responsibility

You are the first female Minister of Home Affairs in the past 75 years, since the ministry was established. Could you please tell us about your feelings?

Assuming office as Minister of Home Affairs is a great honor for me, but also a heavy responsibility to the Party, National Assembly, Government as well as people, especially the contingent of cadres, civil servants, public employees and workers of the entire home affairs sector.

I will have to make great efforts, together with the Civil Affairs Committee and leaders of the Ministry of Home Affairs, to continue to develop the sector, fulfilling the tasks in the new stage.

I feel touched as I am the first female Minister in the 75-year history of the ministry. I have to be able to continue and take over from predecessors to fulfill the tasks assigned to me.

You are one of two women of the current cabinet. What are the favorable conditions and difficulties for female Ministers?

The first favorable condition is that the 13th Party Congress Resolution clearly defines the viewpoints, orientations, goals and tasks for the country development in general and the tasks for the home affairs sector in particular.

As the directions are clear, what we have to do just is go the right way and soon reach the finish. Therefore, I think it would be more favorable to organize the implementation.

Moreover, the previous generations of leaders as well as cadres, civil servants and public employees have created a solid foundation for successors to continue to develop in the next period.

As a woman, I will certainly receive the attention, sympathy and encouragement from women in general and women in the home affairs sector in particular, and from all officers in the sector. This also gives me more motivation and confidence to overcome all difficulties to complete the assigned tasks.

Predecessor helps

How did you feel when you were assigned by the Politburo to the Ministry of Home Affairs five months ago?

This is a state management sector that covers many fields, a difficult and sensitive work. I was worried and felt pressure. But this is the task assigned by the Party, so I have to implement it.

When I began working here, the predecessor (former Minister of Home Affairs Le Vinh Tan) helped me a lot in the work. Tan is an enthusiastic person who has made big contributions to the development of the home affairs sector. He has been very persistent and determined in the last five years to steer the ministry to gain big achievements. His services are great.

What will be your motto and priorities?

First of all, it is necessary to thoroughly grasp the spirit of the 13th Party Congress Resolution and organize the implementation of the resolution in a synchronous way, with focus on five major tasks.

We will continue to give advice to build and perfect the institutional regime, and build a democratic, modern, professional, disciplined and transparent state administration that serves people and international integration,” Pham Thi Thanh Tra, Minister of Home Affairs

We will continue to give advice to build and perfect the institutional regime, and build a democratic, modern, professional, disciplined and transparent state administration that serves people and international integration.

It is necessary to focus on accelerating administrative reform to make a breakthrough for the 2021-2026 period, so as to clear bottlenecks and remove barriers, thus creating motivation for development in the international integration era.

Third, it is necessary to continue restructuring the apparatus to make it compact and effective. This includes the re-arrangement of administrative units at district and commune level, and public non-business units.

This work has been done partially by the Ministry of Home Affairs, but still not comprehensively and synchronously and there are still problems. It will be handled very seriously in the immediate time.

Fourth, we will continue the process of streamlining personnel in association with restricting the contingent of cadres, civil servants and public employees according to job positions and leadership titles. At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to discovering, fostering and appointing talented people to important posts.

These are also the issues mentioned in the 13th Party Congress which aim at building a contingent of cadres, civil servant and public employers who are professional and dynamic, serving people and putting people at the center.

Fifth, it is necessary to accelerate and perfect the decentralization mechanism in state management, and strengthen inspection to ensure unified state management.

You were a leader of local authorities. How will you use the experience you got during that time when you are Minister?

In the last few years, when I was Yen Bai provincial Party Committee Secretary, five tasks of the home affairs sector were implemented very seriously, especially in apparatus rearrangement, administrative reform and decentralization.

These are the precious experiences that I can use when I work as Minister and give instructions on implementation in other localities, especially ones with many difficulties.

You have to live far away from family and relatives. How can you both implement the tasks of a Minister and the tasks of a woman in the family?

There is a saying ‘men build houses, women build homes’. I have to make great efforts to fulfill the vocation of a woman. So, I try to balance the state affairs and housework and do them in harmonization.

Thu Hang

After a decade of wandering around the world, 35-year-old Hoang Thi Trang, originally from the northern province of Nam Dinh, came back to set up a small café in Ho Chi Minh City with decorations made from recycled materials.

Trang’s husband is a director of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry whose tenure changes every three years.

Each time they moved, Trang had to revamp her life and profession in a different country, which she refers to as a ‘three-year start-up circle.’

When in Georgia’s capital city of Tbilisi, Trang realized that she was the only Vietnamese living there while local people had no idea what her motherland was.

“How is the war in Vietnam? Are Vietnamese people living in poverty?” were common questions that Georgian people posed to Trang.

To teach others about Vietnam, its culture and people became her mission back then which partly emerges from her background in ethnography.

One of Trang’s friends in Georgia is a silk painter and they planned to bring silk from Vietnam to create her works on.

Other cultural staples of non la (traditional conical hats) or ao dai were also shipped to the country for a small exhibition.

Then Trang introduced Vietnam, especially its silk products.

As the exhibition captured positive attention from the locals, a director of a museum in Tbilisi invited her over for a conversation.

Trang proposed a project on Vietnam for the museum and got approved.

The project was a big hit which opened the door to further collaboration between the Vietnamese woman and the local museum.

She became its official staff later on.

“I do what I love,” she said.

“There are a lot of foreigners knowing nothing about Vietnam so if they are eager to learn, I will try my best to share Vietnamese cultural quintessence with them.”

2,000 promises to Ho Chi Minh City

In 2020, Trang and her husband came back to Vietnam.

After ten years of living abroad, she was motivated to initiate something meaningful.

Observing that popular coffee chains use single-use plastic bottles, Trang along with her two close friends Nguyen Van Tho and Truong Thi Thuong opened an artistic coffee shop with all decorations, tables, and chairs made from recycled materials in District 2.

They assembled thousands of plastic bottles to build an insulation panel.

“There are 2,000 plastic bottles donated by our customers which symbolize 2,000 promises to reduce and recycle plastic for a greener Saigon,” she explained, referring to the former but still popular name of Ho Chi Minh City.

The café opened in December 2020 and has become a favorite haunt of art and recycling circles.

Trang frequently hosts workshops on environmental protection for children there.

She saves a small corner in her shop to exhibit books exclusively on Indochina.

“My hometown is Nam Dinh, where French people opened Nam Dinh Textile Factory during the colonial Indochina period,” said Trang.

“Therefore, I put books on Indochina, sewing techniques, arts, and even an old spinning machine for our guests to catch a brief glimpse of my city.”

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!