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Hanoi, HCMC fail to provide their kids with public places to play

by e.vnexpress.net Leave a Comment

When summer began this year Truong Ngoc Quynh Nhu of HCMC’s District 3 was as usual struggling to find a safe place near home for her eight-year-old son and five-year-old daughter to play.

She says summer is the “most stressful time” of the year for her because she wants her children to have fun during their holidays but she and her husband are too busy with work to take them on trips.

Since there is no playground near their home, the couple take turns bringing the kids to Tao Dan Park, about 20 minutes away, on weekends. In Vietnam parks often double up as playgrounds for kids, with authorities installing play equipment in many of them.

“I want my children to have a safe place to play. Therefore, this year, like every other year, I have sent them to their grandparents’ in the countryside.”

The 34-year-old says she wants them to have a place to run around and hang out with other kids instead of “burying their heads at home in video games or TV.”

Theirs is a common problem since parks and playgrounds are insufficient in urban areas with few new ones being built and existing ones becoming degraded or being misused.

A decrepit public park in HCMC’s District 5 in August 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Dang Khoa

A decrepit public park in HCMC’s District 5 in August 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Dang Khoa

HCMC has 405 parks , both public and inside residential projects, with central districts having more and larger parks than outlying ones.

Binh Tan, the most populated district in HCMC with around 784,000 people, is the most notable example: this outlying district does not have a single public park.

It has a few small and medium-sized parks of 1,000-10,000 square meters, but all are inside private housing projects.

The same goes for Districts 12, Nha Be, Hoc Mon, Cu Chi, and Binh Chanh, where there are no large-sized public parks.

The city’s urban planners claim to have around 11,400 hectares reserved for public parks, but in reality there are only around 500 hectares of parks.

Officials admit that rapid urbanization is eroding the city’s green space.

Hanoi too

Hanoi also suffers from a shortage of playgrounds, parks and other outdoor public spaces.

According to statistics from the Department of Construction, the inner city area has 63 parks and flower gardens on a total of 280 hectares, or about 2% of the city’s land area.

The four central districts of Hai Ba Trung, Ba Dinh, Hoan Kiem, and Dong Da account for 30 of them and 1.92%.

“When my son says he wants to go out, I often take him to a nearby mall; that is where we play,” Truong Vu Bao says.

The 30-year-old in Hanoi’s Long Bien District says his house is small and there are no near public outdoor spaces for his son to play and relieve stress after school.

The nearest park, a 15-minute drive from his home, is always occupied by adults coming to work out or eat street food with their friends.

The next closest park is too small to accommodate the large number of children coming to play during summer and other holidays.

Due to their busy work schedule, he and his wife can only take their second grader son to the cinema, pool or the district’s culture and sports center once in two weeks.

After the school year ended recently Bao did not hesitate for a moment before sending his son down to his father’s hometown in Thanh Hoa Province for a one-month summer experience in the countryside.

Safety is also a big concern. Many parents reject taking their children to public playgrounds and parks since they are occupied by businesses or are decrepit.

Unlike for Bao and Nhu, there is a small public park within walking distance from Truong Thi Cuc’s house in Cau Giay District.

But the 27-year-old does not consider herself luckier than other parents since it does not feel safe to let her five-year-old daughter play here.

She says the park is situated near a roundabout and lots of vehicles drive by, and is badly downgraded. Many of the swings, slides and other equipment are rusted and broken, potentially posing a danger to children, she says.

“It is impossible for me to fully enjoy the space.”

A sidewalk cafe outside a public park in HCMC’s District 10. Photo by VnExpress/Dang Khoa

A sidewalk cafe outside a public park in HCMC’s District 10. Photo by VnExpress/Dang Khoa

Officials admit there is a lack of green public spaces in Hanoi and playgrounds are degrading.

Chairman of the city people’s council, Nguyen Ngoc Tuan, says Hanoi lacks cultural, sports and park facilities to meet public needs.

Many parents are concerned that the shortage of places to play might impact their children’s mental, physical and behavioral development.

Like Nhu, Phan Minh Cam Tu of HCMC’s District 10 too fears that the lack of play areas will cause her 15-year-old son to become addicted to electronic devices.

The boy wanted to go to her parents’ house in the southern An Giang Province where there is place for physical activity, but Tu could not send him there because the old couple had been sick and cannot take care of him.

Since she has to go to work, there are days when she has to let her son stay at home and play video games all day despite knowing it is not good for him.

“I am afraid he will develop game addiction.”

This, she fears, might cause him to neglect his studies and become anti-social and affect his development.

With rapid urban development crowding out children’s public spaces, authorities are planning to build more outdoor playgrounds and parks and green spaces.

The HCMC people’s committee unveiled a plan in May to build at least 10 hectares of new public parks and two hectares of public green areas this year.

It seeks to expand the public park area to at least 150 hectares by 2025.

The goal is that, by 2030, there will be one square meter of parkland per citizen, almost double the current 0.55 square meters.

Similarly, the Hanoi administration has a program to renovate many existing parks and build six new ones in 2021-25.

It targets average public and green space of 3.02 square meters per person in the central districts by 2030.

Knowing the importance of playing outdoor for kids, Nhu is considering buying a high-end apartment in District 7 with a small park and playground right on the property so that her children can spend more time outside and less on electronic devices.

“I want them to socialize, learn to make new friends and to share, and improve their physical health.”

But that is a long-term plan. She says in the meantime, if her kids want to go out, “I’ll take them to Tao Dan Park and keep an eye on them constantly, or take them to a mall near our house.”

Covid yet to become common illness: health ministry

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In a communication to Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Wednesday, it said for Covid to be considered a common illness, it needs to meet certain criteria like occurring in a specific population group or area and incidence being stable and predictable.

However, in most countries, the number of infections has been fluctuating and the trajectory of infections changes every time there is a new variant of the novel coronavirus.

The new variants constantly appear as immunity, built up either via vaccination or infection, is not stable and decreases over time, the ministry said.

As a result, the disease could flare up again, it said.

In March the PM had instructed the ministry to evaluate the degree of protection antibodies provide against the coronavirus.

Covid has been under control across the country, but the number of cases increased again recently and there are still deaths.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday that Vietnam is among the top four countries in terms of number of cases.

It has been recording over 571,000 new cases the past week, only behind South Korea (713,000 cases), the U.S. (760,000) and Japan (1.4 million cases), WHO said.

To declare the end of Covid-19 as a pandemic, several conditions need to be met, including “detecting no new cases for 28 days in a row” the ministry said.

If Vietnam does make such a declaration, special mechanisms would not be imposed if a new and more dangerous variant appears, it pointed out.

Then Covid patients would stop getting free treatment, including those living in remote areas without easy access to medical services, and medical workers would not get special allowances. There would be no specific mechanisms for emergency use of vaccines.

Maintaining the current status ensures focus and mobilization of all available resources to fight the pandemic, the ministry said.

“Vietnam has basically met the necessary conditions for the transition from pandemic prevention to sustainable management, but still needs to be alert to new variants of the virus.”

Vietnam has among the highest vaccine coverage rates in the world with 247 million vaccine doses given to its 79.4 million people.

Since April the ministry has expanded the vaccination to cover children aged five and upward. Those aged 12 and above are being given booster shots and a fourth dose is highly recommended for high-risk adults.

The ministry also wants to keep Covid-19 in group A, which comprises dangerous infectious diseases with the ability to spread quickly and widely, and have a high mortality rate or an unknown causative agent.

Some others in this group include influenza A – H5N1, plague, smallpox, dengue fever, and cholera.

So far no country has declared Covid a common illness.

Some have fixed criteria to consider it an endemic disease, including low mortality, reduced rate of severe cases requiring hospitalization, and high vaccine coverage of various age groups, especially high-risk populations.

In March WHO released an updated plan with key strategies to allow the world to end the emergency phase of the pandemic if implemented within this year.

They include vaccinating 70 percent of the world against Covid.

As of August 9 some 62.8 percent were fully vaccinated with at least two doses.

Not yet time to vaccinate children under 5 against Covid: health ministry

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The Ministry of Health will continue to follow recommendations by the World Health Organization (WHO), experience from other countries and will determine whether to vaccinate children under 5 against Covid-19 or not based on science.

A vaccine expert said the decision stemmed from the fact that there is not yet enough scientific basis and evidence on Covid-19 vaccination for children under 5.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said in June that Pfizer and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines can be used on children under 5. But a New York Times survey revealed 43% of parents with children under 5 would not let their children be vaccinated against Covid-19, 27% would “wait”, and 13% comply on request.

Their main concerns were the vaccines’ side effects, their novelty and what they perceived as the lack of sufficient research.

As of Wednesday, Vietnam has administered over 249 million Covid-19 vaccine shots, with all children aged 12-17 having received at least two, and 40% three. A total 73% of children aged 5-11 have received at least one Covid-19 vaccine shot, and 41%, two.

On the Kherson front lines, little sign of a Ukrainian offensive

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MYKOLAIV REGION, Ukraine – On the front line in southeast Ukraine, there is little sign that a major counteroffensive is brewing.

For weeks, Western intelligence and military analysts have predicted that a Ukrainian campaign to retake the strategic port city of Kherson and surrounding territory is imminent. But in trenches less than a mile from Russia’s positions in the area, Ukrainian soldiers hunker down from an escalating onslaught of artillery, with little ability to advance.

“It’s to our left side, our right side, over our heads,” said Yuri, a 45-year-old soldier with the Ukrainian military’s 63rd Mechanized Brigade said of the incoming fire, which has intensified over the past week. At night, Russian forces make reconnaissance missions that probe the tenuously held farmland. “It’s a more tense situation,” he said.

Retaking Kherson would mark a devastating blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine. The wider region is crucial to providing fresh water to Crimea, a problem that has cost Russia billions of rubles since its illegal annexation of the peninsula in 2014. It is also a key foothold for any future Russian military push in the south toward Odessa, the coveted jewel on the Black Sea.

But time is slipping if Ukraine is to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky’s stated goal of winning the war by the end of the year, and the current situation on the ground raises the prospect of a long, grinding stalemate instead. Residents who have fled villages in the Kherson region have described Russian forces moving in reinforcements, and officials have eyed those troop movements warily.

“They’ve dug in,” said Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the military administration in Kryvyi Rih, after returning from a trip to inspect the front lines on Sunday. “We know that they are trying to fortify their positions. The enemy has significantly increased its artillery along the entire line,” he said of the 60-mile long front line, after returning from visiting positions on Sunday.

Lacking the basic artillery and armored vehicles needed to progress, Ukraine has focused on operations far behind the front lines. That includes a mysterious attack earlier this week on a Russian air base in Crimea, a major supply hub for Russian operations in Kherson previously assumed to be out of its enemy’s reach.

The progress Ukrainian forces had made here in recent months – recapturing a string of villages from Russia’s control – has largely stalled, with soldiers exposed in the open terrain.

The roads that soldiers zip along among the scorched wheat fields at the front lines are pockmarked with craters from previous strikes, guided by Russia’s Orlan drones that allow them to pick and choose targets.

“There is nowhere to hide,” said Yuri, who has fought here without a break since the beginning of the war, and like other soldiers did not give his last name, in line with protocol. His unit has a hodgepodge stock: modern antitank weapons and a Soviet machine gun manufactured in 1944, and the focus here is holding the line.

Ukrainian military officials are tight-lipped on any timeline for a wider push, but say they need more supplies of Western weapons before one can happen. Ukraine lacks the capacity to launch a full-scale offensive anywhere along the 1,200-mile front line, one security official conceded.

“We have to be honest – for now, Ukraine doesn’t have a sufficient number of weapons systems for a counteroffensive,” said a defense and intelligence adviser to the Ukrainian government who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

“It’s still possible to get a result, but if so it will be the result of smart Ukraine strategy more than of countering Russia with equal power,” the adviser said. “It’s very difficult to match them.”

In an interview this week, Ukrainian army commander Major General Dmytro Marchenko also said “small batches” of Western military aid means carrying out offensive actions is “very difficult” but expressed optimism that the dynamic would change soon.

“I think once we get the full package of this aid, our counteroffensive will be very quick,” he told RBC newspaper, urging people of Kherson to be “a little patient.”

“It will not be as long as everyone expects,” Marchenko added.

Others have appeared to temper expectations, stressing that the situation is dynamic. In recent days, Russia has launched a new assault on cities in Ukraine’s east.

“It changes pretty much every day because the enemy moves their forces and we change our tactics and maneuvers,” said Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the defense minister. “Things change and plans change.”

The counteroffensive “is already happening” in the way that is feasible, said Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s Southern Command, adding that progress will be “little by little” and pointing out that the conflict is a “hybrid war.”

Some have even hinted that the offensive here may have been trumpeted as part of a campaign of informational warfare, designed to draw Russian firepower away from areas farther east.

And Russia has been reinforcing. About 3,000 troops have arrived in the Kherson region over the past week alone, bringing to at least 15,000 the number of Russian troops on the western bank of the Dnieper River, the intelligence adviser said.

Most of them are elite airborne troops who are helping to bolster exhausted Russian forces who have been manning the front line for months, said Kirill Mikhailov, a Kyiv-based analyst with the Conflict Intelligence Team, a Russian research and investigative group.

Fleeing residents describe Russian troops as hunkering down.

“Two weeks ago they came in with big equipment,” said one 42-year-old from Novovorontsovka, near Kherson, who is in touch with parents there. “They are setting up bases in houses.” A 65-year-old who left the tiny village of Mar’ine on June 11 said Russian forces who had barely been visible earlier in its occupation began moving in large numbers in the days before she fled. “They were digging in trenches,” she said.

The troop movements have raised concerns that Russia could be preparing its own new offensive in the area. But while Russia may try to recover some of the villages retaken by Ukrainian troops in recent months, they also lack the means to launch a large-scale operation, analysts and officials say.

The forces around Kherson city constitute Russia’s only foothold on that side of the river, a natural defensive barrier that carves through Ukraine and requires supply routes to pass through several highly vulnerable chokeholds.

Those supply routes have proven vulnerable to Ukraine’s new U.S.-supplied HIMAR rocket systems. And with its strike on Crimea, Ukraine has demonstrated the capacity to hit the heart of Russian military installations in the major military supply hub for Moscow’s operations in the south.

But if Ukraine is to conduct a counteroffensive “the clock is ticking,” Mikhailov said. It’s going to be the muddy season by October, making military movements difficult.

Outgunned, Ukraine is also using hybrid tactics. In the city, much of the local population is hostile to occupation, said Konstantin Ryzhenko, a Ukrainian journalist in hiding there. Russian soldiers are already not visible on the streets of the city in fear of attacks, he said.

Those who remain, including officers from Russia’s FSB intelligence service and police, have moved their bases to civilian locations under hospitals and in urban areas, in fear of HIMAR strikes, Ryzhenko said.

“It just takes one of them to turn around for five seconds for them to be distracted, for them to be hung up and drowned,” he said of Russian troops. In late June, a senior Russian appointed official in the city was killed in a bomb blast.

Given the strike in Crimea, Russia’s hold over Kherson is in jeopardy, said Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington-based think tank.

“I think the Russians will pull out of Kherson soon,” he said. “It’s becoming untenable – really hard to resupply forces.”

That would stymie any Russian goal, however unrealistic, to take all of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and create a connection to the Russian-controlled territory of Transnistria in Moldova. And others point to Russia’s willingness to sacrifice its soldiers even for operations that don’t make strategic sense, while Ukraine typically moves forward only with caution.

“The Ukraine army will never do anything stupid, like Russia, throwing people like cannon fodder into battle to satisfy the ambitions of their leaders,” Sak said. “The question is the price.”

Russia is less militarily vulnerable in areas of Kherson province that lie on the eastern banks of the Dnieper River. That territory is essential to Putin’s long-sought “land bridge” to Crimea and its fresh water supply.

In the first days following the invasion, Russian forces blew up a dam in a canal in the region that had long infuriated Putin. Ukraine dammed the waterway in 2014 following Russia’s occupation of the peninsula. Once-fertile farmland turned into parched barren flats, and the Kremlin was forced to pay out billions in subsidies and to invest in new water projects.

It’s a region Putin is unlikely to relinquish without a ferocious fight.

Although Ukraine has enough manpower to launch a push, Sak said that without more sophisticated weaponry there is a risk of sending troops needlessly to their deaths in an offensive with marginal chances of success.

Some Ukrainian military units are already paying a price. For nearly six months, Ukraine’s 28th Mechanized Brigade has fought along the southern front, stopping a lightning advance by Russian forces outside the city of Mykolaiv.

The unit’s battle-hardened fighters continue to claw back territory as they inch closer to Kherson. Despite being some of the best equipped and most professionally trained units on the front lines, withering Russian artillery strikes across the open steppe have maimed and killed many of their fighters.

In late July, the 28th Mechanized Brigade’s commander, Vitalii Huliaiev, was killed in action and his fellow soldiers intend to avenge his death.

“We will get to Kherson,” said a battalion commander for the unit who goes by the call sign Zloi, which translates as Angry or Mean. “We will have our revenge.”

VN-Index reaches 2-month high

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The index closed 10.3 points higher after losing 4.4 points on Thursday.

Trading on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) fell by 30 percent to VND13.06 trillion ($558.24 million).

The VN-30 basket, comprising the 30 largest capped stocks, saw 25 tickers gain.

BVH of insurance company Bao Viet Holdings rose 2.6 percent.

It was followed by HPG of steelmaker Hoa Phat Group, up 2.4 percent, and BID of state-owned lender BIDV, up 2.3 percent.

Other gainers included SSI of leading brokerage SSI Securities Corporation, up 2 percent, and STB of Ho Chi Minh City-based lender Sacombank, up 1.8 percent.

Three blue chips fell: VJC of budget airline Vietjet lost 0.7 percent, while KDH of real estate firm Khang Dien House and VHM of real estate giant Vinhomes fell 0.5% and 0.3% respectively.

Foreign investors were net buyers for the third straight session to the tune of VND138.31 billion.

The HNX-Index at the Hanoi Stock Exchange, where mid and small caps list, was up 1.08 percent while the UPCoM-Index at the Unlisted Public Companies Market was up by 0.13 percent.