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Gov’t urges haste with construction works
The Government yesterday held an online conference with 63 cities and provinces to discuss capital-construction works and disbursement of Government bonds for education and health-care projects.
According to the Ministry of Education and Training, by the end of last month, 25,600 classrooms and 67,000sq.m of working rooms for teachers were supposed to have been completed.
However, only 1,600 classrooms have been built so far. Localities still have to complete procedures to build more than 23,000 classrooms and 50,000sq.m of teachers’ rooms.
By the end of this year, it is expected that work will start on 20,000 classrooms and 40,000sq.m of working rooms for teachers.
The ministry said speed of implementation of educational construction projects in cities and provinces was slow and unequal.
The ministry asked the Prime Minister to allow it to select bidders for construction works for remote and poor areas that require capital of more than VND1 billion (US$60,600).
The ministry also urged cities and provinces to quickly complete investment procedures and conduct bidding sessions.
Ministry report
According to a report by the Ministry of Health, Government bonds for investment in upgrading districts’ hospitals this year was supposed to be more than VND3.7 trillion ($227 million) for 483 projects.
However, by the end of September, localities had disbursed only about VND3 trillion ($181 million) on 376 projects. This accounted for 80.4 per cent of the planned expenditure.
The finance ministry said that the disbursement rate by the health ministry was low. At the end of September, only 5 per cent of the sum had been spent.
The health ministry has asked the Prime Minister to allow it to co-ordinate with provinces to classify health-care bases, district-level hospitals, general hospitals and health-care centres.
Based on this, the finance ministry will explain the use of capital to the State Treasury.
At the conference, representatives of cities and provinces explained problems in the implementation of projects.
They also pledged that by the end of this year they would disburse about 80 per cent of the capital assigned to them.
After listening to other opinions from representatives of the ministries of Education and Training, Construction, Planning and Investment, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan asked cities and provinces to complete three tasks:
First, by October 20, cities and provinces must complete approvals for the projects in their areas.
Second, they must complete identification procedures for investors. This task will be assigned to local People’s Committee chairmen.
Third, cities and provinces must complete all legal documents that guide implementation of the projects.
Nhan also gave cities and provinces two goals: first, they must complete approval of projects by the end of this year. Second, programmes that use Government bonds to develop basic construction, education and health-care projects must be completed by the end of next year.
Nhan said by the end of November, another conference would be held to review work progress. In December, another conference will be held to prepare for the first quarter of 2009.
VNN
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