By Bạch Liên

Lê Công Phúc became widely known in the central coastal Đà Nẵng City after some of his ideas for improving the city were implemented.

The 34-year-old was one of four people who recently offered himself as a candidate for election to the People’s Council of An Khê Ward in Thanh Khê District (where Phúc lives) and the city’s People’s Council for the 2016-2021 term.

Phúc graduated in marketing from HCM City’s Economics University.

In early 2014, when the city’s Facebook page entitled “Urban management” was launched, Phúc sent several proposals to the administrator of this page, which aims to improve the infrastructure of the city and develop it.

At the beginning, he only sent his opinions and photos showing some negative images of the city such as power outages, manholes without covers or broken trees.

His opinions and photos were warmly welcomed by the administrator of the Facebook page, who forwarded them to the local authorities.

Some months later, after Chairman of Đà Nẵng City’s People’s Committee Huỳnh Đức Thơ published his email address, Phúc sent him his ideas about how to improve the image of the city.

His ideas, which were original and very creative, were welcomed by the chairman. These included, making the roofs of houses of the city green, performing traditional music and arts in public, renovating old apartment buildings, and installing solar power systems for administrative buildings, in addition to a 3D digitisation plan for museum specimens and artefacts.

“My first idea was that artistes should perform traditional arts in front of the park on Bạch Đằng Road, by the Hàn River, because the performance in the Nguyễn Hiển Dĩnh theatre did not attract much of an audience,” he said.

Not long after, the tuồng (classical opera) was performed for the first time by the Hàn River.

“I do not know if this decision was inspired from my idea, but I am happy that it happened. And since then I was much more motivated to think about new ideas and to send them to the local authorities,” he said.    

Phúc said that he was pleasantly surprised to learn that Chairman Thơ himself spent time thinking about those ideas, and then sent a mail to Phúc to thank him and encouraged him to send more such initiatives. Since then, Phúc regularly sends him twenty ideas per month.

Seeing progress

Following one of Phúc’s ideas, the city recently installed a series of fish-shaped manhole covers on Bạch Đằng Street that can prevent awful smells from coming out and trash from going in.

Last year, Phúc sent to the chairman his idea that the city should install more CCTV cameras to enhance the city’s supervision to ensure security, order and safety in the city.

In March this year, the city decided to install an additional 850 public cameras along major routes in the city as well as some residential areas, local hotels, and public places. 

Phúc and his newly-established group “Phát Triển Đà Nẵng” (Develop Đà Nẵng) have helped the city install a part of those cameras on major road sections. All images that are captured by those cameras will be broadcast on the website 0511.vn that was created by Phúc and his group.

Trần Chí Cường, deputy director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Đà Nẵng city said that hundreds of ideas of local inhabitants and tourists aiming to develop the city have been sent to the authorities. Many of those ideas including the ideas from Phúc were put into operation.

He said that the city’s authorities would be willing to buy ideas applicable to public management from local residents, or they would create mechanisms and conditions to help the thinkers find potential investors to realise their suggestions.

Those ideas and suggestions, mostly sent to Đà Nẵng officials via email or Facebook, would be forwarded to relevant departments and units to examine their feasibility and efficiency, Thơ, chairman of the local People’s Committee, said.

On finding that those ideas and propositions were feasible and efficient enough, the departments and units would discuss and co-operate with one another to implement them.

Facebook citizen

In the beginning, Phúc elected himself as a candidate in the elections of the An Khê Ward’s People’s Council as he wanted to help the city deal with livelihood problems such as lack of schools, and water pollution. But then his friends encouraged him to elect himself as a candidate in the elections to the Đà Nẵng city’s People’s Council, as well. He then created a page “Le Cong Phuc” to express his ideas to improve the city and to encourage people to vote for him. He received huge support from the community.  

By expressing his ideas on Facebook, he has made many new friends who contributed money to help him implement some small projects to help develop the city. 

However, some people said that he was too hungry for success and thought no end of himself. But it did not discourage the young man.  

"I did not lose my motivation. By nominating myself for the elections, I want to encourage young people to have more practical thinking. We should not be indifferent to the problems of life. We should join hands to contribute our ideas to help the city develop further,” he said.   

“If I am elected, I will make more efforts to the development of the city. Over the last few years, I have achieved success through Facebook. If I am elected, I will use Facebook to connect with local inhabitants, receive and share their ideas and make them a reality,” he said.  – VNS