Efforts to protect fishermen's rights
On September 30, Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Quang Binh province, Tran Quoc Tuan, said that the unit had worked with the VNPT Quang Binh Business Center to clarify the issue of fishing vessels losing connection to monitor their journeys, leading to fishermen being unable to submit documents to receive fuel costs.
The Department has asked the VNPT Quang Binh Business Center to work with VNPT Group and propose to the Prime Minister for opinions and bring benefits to fishermen.
Previously, Lao Dong Newspaper published an article titled “Fishermen suffer because they cannot submit documents to receive fuel costs”. Accordingly, nearly 70 fishermen in Bao Ninh Commune (Dong Hoi City) could not submit documents to receive fuel costs because they lost connection to monitor their journey.
Some fishermen in Bao Ninh commune and the Quang Binh Network Business Center had a meeting. Documents provided by fishermen clearly stated that the loss of connection occurred from 11pm on April 15, 2024, due to a problem with the Thuraya 3 satellite (This satellite was contracted by the network operator with Thuraya Company - a foreign partner).
The households requested the network operator to be responsible and give their opinions to the Provincial People's Committee to resolve and support according to Decision 48 of the Prime Minister.
VNPT Quang Binh Business Center said that it has responded and made recommendations to the authorities regarding the loss of connection to monitoring the journey of fishing boats due to network problems that prevented fishermen from submitting documents to receive fuel costs.
Ms. Truong Thi Hoang Yen - Deputy Director of VNPT Quang Binh Business Center - said that to support customers, VNPT has a policy of exempting and reducing fees for customers during the satellite incident.
In addition, VNPT also coordinated with the Fisheries Branch, People's Committees of relevant communes and wards to upgrade the software for the journey monitoring device to version 2.0, to add the feature of saving offline fishing vessel journey information and being able to resynchronize data when the connection is restored.
VNPT is responsible for coordinating to confirm the cause.
To temporarily fix the problem, VNPT has proposed that the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Quang Binh province support and guide fishermen to install an additional backup journey monitoring device from another supplier as a backup in case of problems, and ensure continuous connection to journey monitoring data.
VNPT Quang Binh Business Center hopes that the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Quang Binh province will accept the offline journey data provided to fishermen in administrative procedures to support legal seafood exploitation activities.
For data monitoring the journey of fishing vessels operating offshore during the time of the satellite incident that cannot be restored, VNPT is responsible for coordinating with relevant service providers to confirm the cause of the loss of contact, in order to serve as a basis for confirming the fishermen's sea trips.
While the satellite service is not stable, VNPT has proposed that the People's Committee of Quang Binh province accept VNPT's confirmation of the time of loss of satellite phone text message service to the number +849109 as one of the important evidences to confirm the sea trip for fishermen.
As an immediate solution, Quang Binh province has sent a document to Viettel Quang Binh to support the conversion of fishing vessel tracking devices. The province requested Viettel Quang Binh to study technical solutions to convert VNPT tracking devices currently installed on vessels to use Viettel's services.
