General Cuong stressed that after hearing opinions of members of the National Assembly (N.A.) Standing Committee at a meeting to collect comments on some major issues of the draft Law on Civil Defense, which still have differences in opinions, on February 14.
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Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Tan Cuong speaking at the event |
The military official preferred establishing the fund before the happening of incidents or disasters.
He analyzed that the scope of civil defense activities is very wide, involving many fields. When an accident or a disaster happens, its consequences are huge. Therefore, an available resource can be used immediately to solve urgent problems caused by an incident or a disaster. During handling the disaster or incident, the mobilization of additional resources from outside could continue.
General Cuong took the recent devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria as an example. According to him, without available resources, it is difficult to deal with the disaster and meet the urgent requirements. Actually, it takes time to access to aid from countries and international organizations.
Given that, the chief of the General Staff emphasized the need to set up the fund and the use of the fund needs transparent regulations.
He also underlined the need to merge steering and commanding committees on civil defense into a standing agency on civil defense to avoid overlapping in functions and missions and to meet civil defense task requirements.
The defense chief opined that the law should prescribe in the most general way and the government will stipulate specific functions and tasks of the commanding agency on civil defense.
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N.A. Vice Chairman Tran Quang Phuong concluding the meeting |
In his concluding speech, N.A. Vice Chairman Tran Quang Phuong said that the N.A. Standing Committee highly appreciated the responsibility, efforts, and solicitation of the drafting agency, verification agency and relevant ones during studying and collecting opinions for the draft Law on Civil Defense.
He affirmed that the N.A. Standing Committee agreed with a lot of contents of the draft law after they were revised. He said that contents are basically following the Party’s guideline, especially the Politburo’s Resolution, and other provisions of the law while ensuring feasibility in practice.
Regarding the civil defense fund, the legislator said that more opinions on the time to establish the fund should be collected and the establishment of the fund is needed on the basis of public, transparent, and effective use.
He asked the standing board of the Defense - Security Committee to work closely with the drafting agency to collect opinions of the N.A. Standing Committee for the revision of the draft law, ensuring the law-making goal and requirement. He also requested early completion of the draft law and other preparations for opinion collection at N.A. specialized deputies’ meeting before submitting it to the N.A.
Translated by Mai Huong