Vietnam Currents by Hai V. Tran

September 28, 2007

 
Vietnam: The culture of uncultured leaders

 
After the initial shock and grief over the death of 50-plus laborers during the construction of a bridge on a branch of the Mekong River, Vietnam's blogosphere is up-in-arms about the indifferent and callous attitudes of the leaders in the Ministry of Transport and other government big shots.

 Most criticism is leveled at Minister Ho Nghia Dung, who refused to stop a regular meeting in Hanoi when informed of the catastrophe. His spokesman first casually claimed that because of the rain in previous days, landslide might have contributed to the collapse of the scaffoldings. Hence, the weather was the culprit. Thus, don't blame us!

 Ten hours later, the minister made his way to the disaster site but he refused to comment on any aspects of the bridge construction project. His repetitive mantra of "Trying to find out," "I don't have that information." "Will get to the bottom of it!" drove the reporters crazy. As the head of the government ministry whose office  has every detail of that national project but he does not seem to have a clue.

 A blogger comments, "The catastrophe took tens of seconds; the officials took ten hours to come; ten months to find out; and ten years to find the responsible parties! Oh, how wonderful is number 10."

 Yet, some information begins to seep out. This bridge on the Hau Giang branch is similar to the one on the Tien Giang branch that the Australians helped construct and finished in 2003-2004. It connects Can Tho on one bank and Vinh Long on the other. It is a suspension bridge with 85% of the cost coming from the Japanese official development assistance (ODA) fund and 15% from Vietnam. The contractors include a Japanese-Vietnamese venture, a Chinese conglomerate, with some Thai and the Netherlands companies as subcontractors.

 There are 3 principal contracts: the bridge itself is constructed by the Japanese, the part of the road leading to the bridge on the Vinh Long side is by the Chinese, and the part leading to the bridge on the Can Tho side is done by the Vietnamese contractor. It is where the disaster took place.

 Some officials from the ministry of transport reveal, under request for anonymity, that the main Vietnamese contractor subcontracts the work twice, resulting in several small companies with questionable ability and workers' skills to assume such a complicated and high-profile project. The implication is that, as a matter of business practice in Vietnam, each subcontracting always includes the "greasing of the palms" of several officials, including those from the ministry of transport itself. Thus corners are cut, materials are downgraded, and the product is never up to what had been promised!

 In the coming days, more information will reveal where the faults truly lie but people expect the minister to openly accept the overall responsibility in the occurrence of such a disaster. They do not expect him to resign because they know that there is no culture of "official resignation" in communist Vietnam. To be in such an important position takes a lifetime of manipulation of the system, so no one should be expected to behave like a bourgeois public servant to resign. But the minister's callous and compassionless response to the disaster leaves a bitter taste in everyone's mouth.

 Stay tuned ...

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You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Hai Tran came to America as a refugee in 1979. He now lives in Virginia and works for the U.S. federal government.