Smmt transport news brief

Lâm Văn Hoàng, Chief Inspector from the Ministry of Transpor

Lâm Văn Hoàng, Chief Inspector from the Ministry of Transport, talks to Quân Đội Nhân Dân (People’s Army) newspaper on the efforts of his ministry in the year 2020 to reduce the number of road accidents

Can you share with us some of the gains in applying active inspections in the task of transport inspections?

Regular checks and inspections are very important tasks in State management of transport activities. Through such missions, we are able to detect any weakness in both legal documents and weaknesses in implementing them in real life. In addition, such missions will help us raise the efficiency and effectiveness of State management activities to protect the interest of the State and the legal rights as well as the benefits of other organisations and individuals.

We, transport inspectors, have vowed to do our best to make sure the tasks of State management assigned to the transport sector will be accomplished at their best.

Can you share with us what areas transport inspectors will focus on the most in the near future?

We’ll launch comprehensive checks in all aspects, particularly inspection missions to projects which have the potential for fraud. Of course, a key objective for these missions is to prevent any wrongdoing which is likely to happen.

Following our inspection visits, we’ll develop supervisory activities and appraise the reports submitted by the inspection team and follow closely the implementation of the inspectors’ recommendations.

Last but not least, inspectors from the MOT have created a hotline to receive reports or complaints from the general public on any wrongdoing on the side of transport inspectors and others. We hope the feedback from the hotline will help us improve our performance.

Will you please share with us some key tasks assigned to transport inspectors in 2021?

Regarding inspections for 2021, the Ministry of Transport will focus on certain activities.

These activities include the management of construction investment, maintaining the transport infrastructure of land routes, maritime routes, inland waterways, management activities, financial management and others.

Of course, we’ll also develop plans on conducting regular road checks to make sure drivers comply well with the transport law when they are on the roads, on the waterways and elsewhere.

Last but not least, we have held high the task of preventing corruption or embezzlement. VNS

Box

In 2020, the number of transport accidents fell by 16.2 per cent compared to 2019 while the number of injured people also dropped by 18.14 and fatalities by 11.33 per cent.

Also in the year 2020, the MOT launched three major road inspection campaigns and almost 8,200 car drivers were fined a total sum of VNĐ42.3 billion (US$1.89 million). VNS

The road traffic plan, with a vision extended to 2050, envisages that from 2021 to 2025, 31 new expressways with a total estimated investment of VND483.848 trillion ($20.967 billion) are placed on the anvil. These will include 14 component projects on the north-south road link.

These new expressways, built in all regions of the country, will connect with over 10 north-south expressway projects that are already being implemented, linking the Huu Nghi border gate of Lang Son Province in the north to the southernmost province of Ca Mau.

Among the 17 other expressways, five are planned in the north, three in the central and the Central Highlands regions and nine in areas around HCMC and the Mekong Delta.

Another 11 expressways are proposed for the 2026 – 2030 period.

Four of these will be in the north, three in the central and Central Highlands regions, and four in the south.

The total investment of the expressway projects planned for the 2026 – 2030 period is about VND340,620 billion ($14.760 billion).

According to the draft plan, the country will have about 5,000 km of expressways in operation by 2030.

The transport ministry has proposed to the National Assembly that the nation allocates 4-5 percent of GDP for investment in transport infrastructure for the 2021 – 2030 period.

Minister Nguyen Van The stressed at a weekend meeting that planning should focus on sustainability and the goal of connecting all provinces and cities.

Automatic weighing stations will be built on national highways, especially roads with heavy traffic of overloaded vehicles. — VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — The Ministry of Transport has called for expanding the use of automatic weighing stations on national highways, prioritising roads with many overloaded vehicles.

After six months of piloting the installation of an automatic weighing system on Highway 5, experts from the transport ministry said high-speed automatic weighing technology helped control and reduce the number of overloaded vehicles on the road.

The experts also said the automatic weighing minimised corruption in the process of punishing overloaded vehicle’ drivers.

Nguyễn Văn Huyện, General Director of the Directorate for Roads of Việt Nam (DRVN), under the ministry, said the automatic weighing system has monitored 100 per cent of the number of vehicles using the road.

“The software is controlled by many units, so there is no human intervention in the result of handling violations,” he said.

He said that after evaluating the pilot results, DRVN would complete procedures for expanding the use of automatic weighing stations on national highways and major cities and provinces.

“We will prioritise key highways with a large number of overloaded vehicles such as the provinces of Ninh Binh, Thanh Hóa, Nghệ An, the gateways in and out to Hà Nội,” he said.

DRVN reported that after six months of piloting the automatic weighing system on National Highway 5 (from August 15, 2020, to February 14, 2021), it found 663 of the 466,782 vehicles were overloaded with goods.

At the National Traffic Safety Committee’s online conference on April 9, Deputy Prime Minister Trương Hòa Bình said overloaded vehicles were leading to degraded roads in many localities.

He said vehicles carrying overloaded goods on road was an act of destroying national property, which should be handled seriously. — VNS