Regarding the sinking of the Green Bay 58 QN-7105 ship, on July 21, speaking with Lao Dong reporter, Mr. Nguyen Van Thong - Deputy Director of the Department of Waterways and Inland Waterway Vehicle Inspection of Quang Ninh province said: The Green Bay 58 ship was built in 2014, with the design approved by the Vietnam Register. This is a steel-shelled ship, 20 meters long, 6 meters wide, with a main engine capacity of 150CV, allowed to carry up to 48 people. The ship has been licensed to operate since 2015. At that time, this was a ship of good quality. Since then, the ship has been transferred once but has still been fully inspected annually.
The ship has been inspected 14 times, with minor repairs, but has not been converted. "In general, the quality of the ships is still good enough to operate" - Mr. Nguyen Van Thong said.
According to Mr. Thong, the last operating license of the ship was in January 2025, effective until February 4, 2026. According to Mr. Nguyen Van Thong, the Green Bay 58 ship, like many other ships operating in Ha Long Bay, is only equipped with a GPS positioning system, which operates based on phone waves, so in low-lying areas, phone signal cavities, the GPS positioning system loses signal.
Previously, Lao Dong reporters had many articles reflecting on the "pulling" of phone waves in the middle of Ha Long Bay. Due to " recording" the phone signal, tourists taking a train to some areas in the middle of Ha Long Bay cannot contact their homes. Currently, only a few islands near the shore, such as Ti-top, have a phone signal, but the signal is also weak and unstable if far from the wave pole location due to the mountain ranges.
In early 2023, Viettel Quang Ninh coordinated with the Ha Long Bay Management Board to develop an Economic - Technical Report on investment in the construction of BTS station infrastructure in Ha Long Bay with 6 BTS broadcasting stations in 6 areas in the core area of the bay. These 6 stations are expected to be operational from March 2023. However, because Ha Long Bay is a World Natural Heritage, it has not been able to be implemented yet due to the provisions of the Law on Cultural Heritage and many other regulations.
