Vice Chairman of Vinh City People's Committee: Clearing sidewalk encroachment requires a transitional period

View of the 8th session of Vinh City People's Council, term 2016 - 2021. Photo: Mai Hoa

No drastic solution yet:

Before entering the question and answer session, the meeting held a discussion session in the hall. Many delegates of the City People's Council continued to express their concerns when the City People's Committee has not paid special attention, clearly determined the time and drastic solutions for a number of issues.

Delegate Nguyen Huu Trung - Party Secretary of Hung Loc commune said that the planning and functional zoning of wards and communes is very slow; although the City People's Committee has included it in the implementation plan for 2019, it has not yet determined a specific time frame for completion in the year, demonstrating its determination.

Besides, delegate Nguyen Huu Trung also said that the city has not had a drastic solution to reclaim projects using large land resources that have not been implemented for many years.

Delegate Nguyen Huu Trung - Party Secretary of Hung Loc commune said that the city has not clearly defined the time and determination in planning and dividing the functions of wards and communes is currently very slow. Photo: Mai Hoa

Mr. Le Van Long - Secretary of the Party Committee of Le Loi Ward said that although Vinh City is a locality with a large number of financial services and pawn services, and the province has recently issued a warning about the situation of "black" credit activities disguised as businesses, financial services, and pawn services; however, in the report on the implementation of the socio-economic development plan in 2018 and the tasks for 2019, the City People's Committee did not mention black credit activities. Therefore, it is recommended that the City People's Committee supplement tasks and solutions for 2019.

Concerned about the flooding situation in the city, delegate Nguyen Xuan Truong - Secretary of Quang Trung Ward Party Committee worried that just by raining on the evening of December 7 and 8, the city "fell" the entire route.

This issue is raising concerns about the effectiveness of dredging the drainage system and collecting garbage on the routes in recent times and it is recommended that the city should make it public so that people and local authorities can monitor the dredging and collection of garbage on the routes using budget funds.

Delegate Nguyen Thi Lan Anh requested the City People's Committee to come up with solutions to collect tax arrears and fees. Photo: Mai Hoa

In addition to the above issues, many delegates also proposed that the city pay attention to managing advertising activities; have solutions to collect taxes and fees from the people, ensure social justice and increase budget revenue for the city; build effective key agricultural economic models for replication.

It is also about planning and managing investment planning for construction of high-rise apartments in the inner city; clarifying responsibilities when many wards and communes do not fulfill land exploitation targets and a series of issues regarding land management, urban order...

Sustainable solutions for urban order are needed.

The content of the questioning at this session chosen by the City People's Council focuses on solutions to ensure urban order and traffic safety in the city, meeting the requirements of building a civilized and modern urban area.

Vice Chairman of the City People's Committee Le Sy Chien explains the issues of urban order, traffic safety and sidewalk order in the city. Photo: Mai Hoa

Explaining this issue to the City People's Council, Vice Chairman of the City People's Committee Le Sy Chien said that this work has continued to have many positive changes recently; the phenomenon of shabby stalls on the roads and sidewalks has been basically resolved; people's awareness of maintaining urban order has been clearly raised.

According to the Vice Chairman of the City People's Committee, in 2018, the workload on urban order of the authorities was also increased and promoted. Evidence is that at the ward and commune levels, more than 7,000 campaigns were organized; more than 1,800 cases were recorded and the result was a fine of more than 929 million VND (in 2017, only 490 million VND was fined).

City authorities mobilized to restore urban order in Ben Thuy ward. Photo: Mai Hoa

The city has also organized 5 campaigns to clear and restore urban order, traffic safety and sidewalk order. And the results of handling violations by the city's Rapid Response Team include 2,313 administrative violation records (388 records in 2017); processed and paid into the budget nearly 2.2 billion VND (in 2017 there was only over 537 million VND).

However, Mr. Le Sy Chien also admitted that the encroachment on roads and sidewalks, especially outside of business hours and at night, and the amount of garbage left on sidewalks is still high.

Questioning the leaders of the City People's Committee, delegate Nguyen Van Chinh - Head of the Vinh City Party Committee's Organization Committee said that the issue of urban order and traffic safety is an important task for the city and has long been focused on by the city, wards and communes, but it is not sustainable.

Therefore, it is necessary to change the approach from the people and in reality, does Vinh city have a self-management model to ensure urban order discussed, implemented and supervised by the people?

Delegate Nguyen Van Chinh suggested that the City People's Committee should change its approach to ensuring urban order and sidewalk order. Photo: Mai Hoa

Responding to the opinion of delegate Nguyen Van Chinh, Mr. Le Sy Chien said that previously, the city had the idea of ​​piloting a self-management model on urban order and sidewalk corridors on Phan Dang Luu street, but there were no suitable points so it was stopped.

The Vice Chairman of the City People's Committee also affirmed that because the use of sidewalks has been in the subconscious of a part of the city's residents, it is very difficult to say that the determination to clear sidewalks in a day or two is very difficult, but it is necessary to accept a transitional period to persistently propagate and implement.

And the solution in this transitional period is to deploy a model of self-management teams for urban order in each street and residential group, but it must be linked to the interests of the people to ensure sustainability. At that time, the functional forces only have the task of reviewing, checking, and supervising the implementation of the self-management teams; otherwise, the situation of "kidnapping and abandoning the plate" and "throwing stones into the pond" will continue, because the force working on urban order has only 200 people and cannot do it all.

Vice Chairman of the City People's Committee Le Sy Chien also answered the questions of delegate Nguyen Dinh Cat - Chairman of the City Fatherland Front Committee on propaganda solutions to raise awareness and actions of the people to create positive changes in urban order, traffic safety and order, and sidewalk order of the city through printing leaflets to distribute to each household, from garbage collection hours to what can and cannot be done on sidewalk fabric..., in parallel with the current forms of propaganda.

Mr. Le Sy Chien also proposed solutions and recommended that the city should include criteria for implementing this work in the evaluation and ranking of emulation of departments, branches, sectors, wards and communes; associated with handling the responsibilities of leaders in this work to increase responsibility.

It is proposed that the C7 intersection be widened to divert traffic from Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street to Le Hong Phong Street. Photo courtesy

Regarding the content of the questioning, Chairman of the City People's Council Nguyen Van Lu affirmed that the issue of urban order and traffic safety is an important and regular task, requiring the functional departments, wards and communes to pay attention and participate in directing.

In which, we continue to pay attention to innovating propaganda work; proactively advise on synchronous planning of parking lots, sidewalks, parking areas, businesses, opening turns, lane separation, advertising systems, etc., ensuring a beautiful and civilized Vinh city; perfecting the functional forces, especially the rules team, the rapid response team, as the core force in ensuring urban order, traffic safety and sidewalk order, etc.