The gang of six men, aged between 30 and 34, dug a six-metre long underground tunnel to steal from TeaYang Electronics Co Ltd in the Đình Trám Industrial Zone. — Photo zing.vn

You’re really going to dig this

Most burglary in Việt Nam is performed with basic tools and little planning, wham, bam thank-you ma’am stuff. But a gang of thieves from the northern province of Bắc Giang went above and beyond (or below and though) to fulfill their nefarious goals.

The gang of six men, aged between 30 and 34, dug a six-metre long underground tunnel to steal from a company.

The robbing scum used drills and shovels to dig the trench to enter TeaYang Electronics Co Ltd in the Đình Trám Industrial Zone to take more than 1,000 telephone and mobile phone spare parts worth nearly VNĐ2 billion (US$88,800).

The tunnel connects the company’s goods store with a nearby company which had ceased to operate, with the scheme taking a month to carry out.

They dug during working hours so noise from TeaYang Electronics would mask the sound of their drilling machines.

Despite their great efforts and painstaking preparation, this month they were caught by police.

Perhaps it would have been more profitable to disengage their brains and work on getting a decent job instead of hatching a difficult plan.

Parents spend overnight at school gate to register for grade 1

Most people spend an all-nighter or two during their school days, but few people expect to have to pull an all-nighter on behalf of their children’s school carreer. 

However: every year when summer comes, parents across the country wait overnight at school gates to register their children for kindergarten or grade 1 at primary schools.

This year, as usual, the first area to see the trend was Bình Dương Province.

On Sunday night, hundreds of parents brought pillows, sleeping mats or hammocks to the school gate of the Tuy An Primary School in Thuận An Town to wait to register for their children to grade 1.

Some even slept on their motorbike saddles.

Everyone was ready with documents in hands.

The school is in an area with a lots of workers, so if people want their kids in school, they must register early.

With an increasing population and public schools that do not meet demand, the problem may cause sleepless nights for parents for many years to come.

Shock horror at bureaucratic excess

Good advice is hard to come by and common tropes regurgitated as advice can often be little help, so one advisory department in the capital is firmly eschewing the credo ‘double the trouble’.

The Hà Nội Department of Home Affairs acts as an advisor for the municipal people’s committee about personnel and working staff. It should be a model department, but in fact has twice the number of deputy directors it should, employing eight instead of four, leaving life in the department twice as nice, at least for those picking up the same pay-check for half the work.

Speaking about the issue, chief of the department’s secretariat Nguyễn Thị Liễu said that the department used to have four deputy directors, and the number increased before the city’s Party Congress in November 2015.

Before the congress, two people were too old to be reelected, so they were given jobs as deputy directors of the department, with two others acting as heads of the emulation and reward division and the religion division, titles equal to deputy director, said Liễu.

In September 2015, Ministry of Home Affairs inspectors performed a spot check on personnel management in different administrative organisations of the Hà Nội People’s Committee. The ministry did not announce the violators in detail, but confirmed that some organisations in the capital city had too many deputy directors.

A Government report sent to the National Assembly recently said that nine provinces and cities violated personnel management regulations. For example, the Thái Nguyên Department of Agriculture and Rural Development had 23 too many leaders. – VNS