HÀ NỘI — Hà Nội will stop the daily public speaker broadcasts in four districts in the city centre, except in case of emergencies, authorities said.

Hà Nội People’s Committee Chairman Nguyễn Đức Chung has signed off a plan to rearrange and improve the performance of the city’s public speaker system.

As per the plan, each ward in the city’s districts will retain only five to 10 speaker units, with a maximum of two speakers per unit. The remaining units, which have been used for years now, will remain turned off until the city takes a final decision on what to do with them.

Local authorities have requested that public speaker systems not be used near schools, hospitals, diplomatic centres and areas where there’s a majority of senior citizens and expats.

Public speaker systems in Hoàn Kiếm, Ba Đình, Đống Đa and Hai Ba Trưng districts will not be used at all, except in emergencies such as to issue disaster warnings, for search and rescue operations, for disease prevention, or under specific orders from the government.

The rest of the capital’s urban districts will continue to broadcast information that is relevant to locals, but not more than twice a day, in the morning and early evening, and not for longer than 15 minutes each time. The speaker systems can be used on all weekdays, but only for special occasions on weekends.

In Sơn Tây township and other suburban districts, the speaker system will be subject to restrictions similar in the urban districts, except that the broadcasting time will be a maximum of 45 minutes.  

A public survey conducted by Hà Nội authorities in February found that 90 per cent of Hanoians believed it was time to discard the public speaker system; another 90 per cent said the information broadcast on public speakers was not useful. — VNS