Transcript On the Government`s policy in preventing, protecting against

ISSUES RECEIVING A VARIETY OF
CONSIDERATIONS DURING THE VERIFICATION
PROCESS OF THE LAW PROJECT
ON PREVENTING, PROTECTING AGAINST, AND
MILTIGATIING DISASTER
H.E. Mr. Nguyễn Vinh Hà
Vice Chairman of the Committee on
Science, Technology and Environment
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The Committee has been assigned by the Standing Committee of the
National Assembly (NA) the following tasks: (i) leading the verification
of the Law project on preventing, protecting against, and mitigating
disaster; (ii) taking into account opinions, assisting the Standing
Committee of the NA. on revising the Law for the NA’s approval.
During the Law verification process, the Committee has been studying
various national and international relevant documents and Laws. The
Committee has also organized 8 site visits to selected provinces and cities
being under severe impact of disasters.
The verification report of the Law has been already provided to the
members of the National Assembly.
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In the scope of this presentation, we would
like to focus on 06 issues receiving different
opinions during the Law verification process:
1. On applicable entities of the Law project
2. On principles of preventing, protecting againts
disaster (PPD)
3. On the Government’s policy on PPD
4. On the Government’s policy on PPD
5. On activities on PPD
6. On the structure of the Government
management organization for PPD
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1. On applicable entities of the Law project
It is known that Vietnam is among the most countries
suffering frequent natural disaster damage
1.1. There have been a variety of disasters occurred in
Vietnam, categorizing by regions and 8 specific geographical
areas:
a) Disasters occurred in specific regions:
North of VN:
mostly flood,
gust, earthquake,
soil erosion, flash
flood in several
northern
mountainous
provinces
Central VN:
mostly flood,
gust,
thunderstorm,
typhoon,
regional flood
South of VN:
water rising,
coastal flood,
riverbank
erosion…
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b) Geo-disasters in 8 areas (in order of frequency):
1)
• Northern mountainous area: frequent flood, splash flood,
gust, thunderstorm, drought, soil erosion, earthquake, typhoon.
2)
• Northern west area in North Vietnam: frequent flood,
splash flood, gust, drought, earthquake, thunderstorm, soil
erosion, coastal flood.
3)
• Red river delta: frequent typhoon, flood, gust, thunderstorm,
regional flood, drought, soil erosion, water rising, coastal
flood.
4)
• Coastal area in northern Central Vietnam: frequent
typhoon, flood, splash flood, drought, regional flood, gust,
coastal flood, soil erosion, water rising, desertification,
earthquake, tsunami.
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b)
in 88 areas
b) Geo-disasters
Về đặc thù của
vùng (continued):
địa lý (tiếp theo):
5)
• Coastal area in southern Central Vietnam: frequent
typhoon, flood, splash flood, drought, regional flood, gust,
thunderstorm, soil erosion, water rising, coastal flood,
desertification, earthquake, tsunami…
6)
• Western Highlands: frequent flood, splash flood, drought,
typhoon, gust, thunderstorm, soil erosion, desertification,
earthquake…
7)
• Eastern South of VN: frequent flood, splash flood, drought,
typhoon, gust, thunderstorm, soil erosion, water rising, coastal
flood, desertification, earthquake.
8)
• Mekong delta: frequent flood, coastal flood, regional flood,
soil erosion, typhoon, gust, thunderstorm, drought, water
rising, desertification.
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1.2. Applicable entities in current normative legislative
documents:
• Follow ordinance for preventing, protecting against flood and
typhoon 1993: 10 kinds of applicable disasters
• Follow ordinance for preventing, protecting against against flood and
typhoon 2001 and Decree No. 14/2008/NĐ-CP: 13 kinds of applicable
disasters
1.3. Law draft on PPD: 18 categories of applicable
disasters and “other disasters”:
• After studying international standard and terminology of disaster
(defined by the United Nation’s office for disaster risk reduction –
UNISDR) and examining actual disasters occurred in VN, in our
opinion the determination of disaster categories in the current Law
draft is appropriate.
• However, there have been other opinions considering that only
popular and severely-damaged disasters shall be selected to assign
adjustment in the Law. Some other opinions consider inserting “other
disasters” beside 18 disaster categories for flexible adjustment of
response to weather abnormal and current situation of climate
change.
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2. On principles of preventing and protecting
against disaster
2.1. Role of the Government:
• There have been many opinions arguing that the Government
plays the main role in preventing and protecting against
disaster (PPD), supplementing by individuals, organizations,
and community.
• Otherwise, some argues that in PPD each individual must act
actively before the supports of community and the
Government. The Government only focuses in particular
areas such as forecasting, warning; developing and
implementing plan for response, recovery…
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2.2. On the policy “4 on-site solutions”:
• On the one hand, some argues that this policy is
significantly important in PPD. On the other hand, at
some local areas visited by the Committee’s working
delegation some argues that this policy was not
necessarily true during the whole operation of PPD,
especially when disaster occurred in large scale, effected
area was separated in parts…
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3. On the Government’s policy in preventing,
protecting against disaster
Considering issues:
3.1. There have been many considerations about landuse plan, people living in regions frequently damaged
by disaster, evacuation of households in those regions
and resettlement.
(Actual site visit to Tùng Quá Lìn commune (Lai Châu
province), the local government had evacuated 100
households out of the soil-erosion area, however, after a
period of time people returned for reasons of way of living,
shortage of productive land, resettlement to land
inappropriate for cultivation or belong to another
commune).
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3.2. Disaster insurance issue:

Experience from foreign countries: damage insurance in
USA. For the case of Sandy hurricane, the damage estimation
was about USD 30-50 billions, however, it was estimated that
the insurers have to pay USD 10- 20 billions. In Japan, the
earthquake and tsunami in Mar, 2011 causing Fukushima
accident was estimated to cause USD 197 -308 billions
damage and the insurance amount paid by insurer was
estimated USD 21-34 billions.

It is stated in the Law draft that “the Government policy is to
encourage insurance company in having permission of
founding and doing disaster insurance business in Vietnam.
…”
Nevertheless, for current conditions of Việt Nam the Law
necessarily assigns in more detail the preferential policy for
company doing disaster insurance business because of the
high risk of this kind of business.

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4. On resources for preventing, protecting against
disaster
4.1. Finance
• Clarify the role of government budget in PPD:
usage for what activities? What is the appropriate
budget portion in the socio-economic conditions
of Vietnam?
• PPD fund: Currently divided into 02 categories:
+
Local
fund
for
preventing,
protecting
against flood, typhoon
founded at province-level
after the decree 50/CP
(1997)
+ Fund from voluntary
organizations,
individuals, eg. Fund for
disaster damage support
in Central Vietnam.
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4.2. Human resource:
• Need to assign in details on building PPD
potential, human resource usage in PPD,
appropriate treating regulations…
• Assign training, maneuvering for disaster
response of civilian and rescue force.
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5. On PPD activities
5.1. Information of disaster warning:
• Need to assign in the Law “the determination of
disaster risk level” and “disaster warning level”.
• Clarify responsibility of warning organization
and warning level.
• (Actual site visit in Quảng Bình province shows that when
people’s committee decided to evacuate civilian out of the
region effected by typhoon, people did not obey the order
because several post failed warnings had caused expenses)
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- Need to build up early warning system,
evaluation of disaster risk and network for
providing information to AHA Center in the
case Vietnam joins the ADDMER agreement
(Currently, disaster map has been constructed in several
provinces, for example the submerged region map in Cần
Thơ, flood map in Quảng Bình…)
5.2. On rescue, life saving:
• Clarify the role of military force
• Add the regulation for international aid and relief
• Add the regulation for the rights and obligations
of intn’l organizations in disaster aid and relief
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6. On structure of PPD organization
• Central Steering Committee for PPD (Standing office
located at MARD); National Committee for seeking
At central
and rescue (Ministry of Defence)
level:
At local
level:
• Based on actual conditions, the 02 committees can
be combined into Executive Committee for
preventing, protecting against flood, typhoon and
seeking, rescue at local levels.
However, the members of the Committees work part-time
only, and also the assisting human resource for the
Committees at central as well as local level is very
limited.
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• In some countries, organizations in
charge of PPD/state of emergency were
established from central level to local level
such as in USA, China, Russia…
• In other countries, the model of one
government management agency
and
steering departments were established,
along with system of professional
organizations on PPD such as in Thailand,
Philippines, Indonesia, Japan…
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Recommendation of the model appropriate
with conditions in Vietnam:
• Enhance ability, function, task for specialized
offices of current steering committee, executive
committee for preventing, protecting flood,
typhoon and rename to Central Executive
Committee for preventing, protecting against
disaster, Steering Committee for preventing,
protecting disaster and finding, rescuing life at
province, district and commune levels.
• Clarify responsibility of relevant Ministries
• Establish regulation for co-operation mechanism
in the task of PPD.
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In summary, we have presented 06 groups
of
issues
receiving
a
number of
considerations and recommendations.
In our opinion, those above-mentioned
issues
need
continuously
analyzing,
investigating at different view points. Based
on the concluded results, we will select
optimal solution for solving the issues during
the process of taking into account
recommendations and revising the Law
draft.
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At this conference, we are very happy to
invite several experienced international
experts working many years on disaster risk
management to present their useful and
helpful presentations.
In our opinion, the above-mentioned
issues will be made clear by the experience
exchange of the international experts and all
your considerations after the conference.
Sincerely thank you!
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