The meeting was the first of this kind to be held by military regions in the coming time.

Lieutenant General Huynh Chien Thang, Deputy Chief of the General Staff and Deputy Head of the Ministry of National Defense’s Steering Committee on Border Patrol Road Building, attended the event.

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Lt. Gen. Huynh Chien Thang addresses the event.

Military Region 9 has three provinces bordering Cambodia, with 197.944km-long land border and 211km-long border patrol road. From 2007 to 2016, the Ministry of National Defense built two border patrol road projects in Dong Thap province with the total length of 58.76km and assigned Project Management Unit No.47 under the General Staff to act as the representative of the investor.

In December 2016, Military Region 9 was tasked by the Ministry of National Defense to be the investor of border patrol road projects. In particular, MR9 carried out four projects including two freshly-launched projects in the 2017-2020 period and two projects in the 2014-2016 period transferred by Project Management Unit No.47.

So far, MR9 has been constructing 147.4km of the border patrol road, of which 67.38km has been completed and handed over to the locality for exploitation. The total investment for these projects is more than VND 2.4 trillion, including VND 1.7 trillion allocated and VND 1.440 billion disbursed.

The meeting evaluated that completed projects have brought into play great effectiveness in terms of national defense and security and socio-economic development in border areas. Particularly, the border patrol road has created favorable conditions for relevant forces to patrol and protect the national border territory sovereignty, and shorten the maneuver time between border guard posts and border protection forces.

Attentively, these projects have also created favorable conditions for immigration, socio-economic development in border areas. They have acted as flood barriers, facilitated local agricultural production and aquaculture, and synchronously connected with the local transport system, shortened travel time between locality in the military region, and made it easy for agricultural and aquatic products transportation.

In the coming time, MR9 will continue to direct the effective implementation and completion of the assigned projects by 2030.

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At the meeting

Addressing the meeting, General Thang confirmed that the building of border patrol roads is a major policy of the Party and the State with the aim of creating conditions to patrol, control the borderline and land markers, and firmly safeguard national border sovereignty, contributing to socio-economic development in border areas.

The deputy chief of the General Staff praised the project management unit for their efforts in running the projects and some contractors for their activeness and proactiveness in surmounting difficulties and other obstacles to build the road.

General Thang suggested that in order to speed up the disbursement of capital for project implementation and promote the effective use of the projects, localities should actively coordinate with Military Region 9 during project implementation, especially in land clearance, road reception and maintenance.

He also urged MR9 to enhance inspection and supervision at the scene, detect and handle contingencies in a timely and effectively manner, ensure safety of participating forces, progress and quality of the projects, as well as promptly deal with arising difficulties and problems, especially national border issues.

Translated by Mai Huong