Over the past years, Bac Lieu Provincial Border Guard has carried out the work of law propagation and dissemination for the people in the border areas synchronously with various forms. Thereby, it has contributed to raising the people’s awareness and sense of law observance and building a solid all-people border defence posture, creating favourable conditions for the locals to develop a sustainable marine economy.

Being a coastal province in the Mekong Delta, Bac Lieu Provincial Border Areas consist of 02 districts (Hoa Binh and Dong Hai) and Bac Lieu city. In recent years, Bac Lieu has made great efforts to reform and integrate into international economy more and more deeply and widely, resulting in many important achievements, especially in marine economy. However, the material and spiritual life of the people in coastal districts still faces difficulties; the rate of poor households is higher than the national average; the access to legal information and documents remains inadequate. Therefore, the legal awareness of a number of people is still limited; the problems of illegal fishing, fishing ground disputes, trade fraud, and illegal border crossing to Cambodia still occur. In addition, due to the impact of the downside of market economy, social evils and criminal offenses have not been successfully prevented and repelled; traffic accidents tend to increase; and hostile forces have intensified the strategy of “peaceful evolution” with many new artifices. These factors have significantly affected Bac Lieu’s comprehensive development and Provincial Border Guard’s task performance. As a core force in carrying out the Project “Strengthening law dissemination and education for cadres and people in the border and island areas”, the Provincial Border Guard’s Party Committee and Command have proposed many policies on executing the Project synchronously and effectively.

Legal propagation for the fishers in hamlet 2, Ganh Hao township, Dong Hai district

First and foremost, due regard has been paid to actively and proactively advising the Provincial Party Committee and People’s Committee to issue a system of documents, serving as a legal basis for the Project conduct. This is an important content, playing a crucial role in promoting the synergy of entire political system. At the same time, significance has been attached to counselling the Provincial People’s Committee to introduce documents, such as: Plan 68/KH-UBND on executing the Project “Strengthening law dissemination and education for cadres and people in the border and island areas in the 2017-2021 period”, Plan 15/KH-UBND adopting the Prime Minister’s Directive on a number of urgent tasks and solutions to overcome the warning of European Commission against illegal, unregulated, unreported fishing, etc. Under that spirit, the Provincial Border Guard Command has directed its Border Posts and Flotilla 2 to cooperate with localities and functional agencies in carrying out the Project in communes, wards and coastal towns in each period and each year. In order to make a breakthrough and draw experience from practice, the Provincial Border Guard Command has advised the Provincial Party Committee and People’s Committee to select some localities with difficulties to build up model units for law propagation, dissemination and education. Specifically, in the Project execution in the period of 2017-2021, Vinh Hau commune, Hoa Binh district has been built as a model unit, contributing to creating a spillover effect and considerably improving the people’s sense of law observance and responsibility for building and protecting national sea and island sovereignty.

The Provincial Border Guard’s Party Committee and Command have identified oral propagation as a highly interactive and practical method. Thus, the unit has focused on building a contingent of legal speakers and communicators with qualifications, legal knowledge, oral communication skills and responsibility for work. Up to now, within Bac Lieu province’s border areas, 4 legal propagation, dissemination and education groups with the total number of 20 members have been founded. In order to improve this force’s working capacity, on a yearly basis, the Provincial Border Guard Command has reviewed, classified, evaluated cadres, and dispatched them to get intensive training in law. Simultaneously, attention has been paid to actively cooperating with functional agencies in organizing training courses to update and enhance legal knowledge and necessary propagating skills for cadres, including the skills of presenting, organizing collective activities, consulting, mediating, and dealing with legal violations at grassroots level. Besides, consideration has been given to periodically maintaining legal speaker conferences to provide information and direct the work of legal propagation in the coming time in each locality. In parallel with that, the Provincial Border Guard has provided documents for oral propagation, such as: Internal Notices of the Provincial Propaganda and Training Commission and Border Guard Command, guiding documents of national, provincial and district level bodies in the service of research and study, and new newspapers and legal documents in order to help legal speakers and communicators access to many sources of information close to different types of subjects. As a result, the Provincial Border Guard force’s capacity and qualifications of legal speakers and communicators have been constantly raised to meet the task requirements.

Presenting the legal documents to Vinh Thinh commune, Hoa Binh district

To achieve high efficiency, the Provincial Border Guard Command has paid special attention to developing contents, renewing methods of legal propagation and dissemination in accordance with the subjects’ levels of awareness and locality’s task requirements. Under the motto “focus, basics and practicality”, the Provincial Border Guard Command has instructed functional agencies to compile the contents of legal documents in a short, compact, easy-to-understand, easy-to-remember, easy-to-do way in conformity with the level of awareness of each object. With the aim of attracting participants, the content of propagation must be directly related to the life of local people. For fishermen, the focus has been placed on propagating and disseminating new legal documents serving the tasks of economic, cultural, social, national defence and local security development, and relevant documents related to the national border, sea and island sovereignty, such as documents regarding fishing management, protection and exploitation; management and authorization of fishing activities for fishermen; system of national border markers; regulations on trade and commerce in the sea border, etc.

With the orientation “towards the grassroots units”, the Provincial Border Guard has stayed close to the locality, the people, and the objects and stayed, worked, and spoken local language with the people in order to carry out law propagation and dissemination for the people effectively; strictly maintained the order for deploying border posts’ party members to be in charge of households in the border areas. Thereby, it has helped to fully grab hold of the area and understand the needs of people so as to propagate the law directly and specifically and opportunely give legal advice on arisen difficulties and problems. At the same time, law propagation and dissemination have been conducted through daily work of border guard cadres and soldiers, such as: patrol, mass mobilization, new rural area building, social and policy work implementation, search and rescue. Border guard control stations have popularized contents of law propagation and dissemination for fishermen when their vehicles are under registration. The border posts’ working groups and Flotilla 2 have made use of time to guide fishermen to abide by the law when they rested in fishing ports. The highlight here is that law propagation and dissemination have not only been carried out directly, but also integrated into the work aspects and activities of local departments, branches, unions through party cell meetings, village meetings, festivals, artistic performances, physical training and sports activities, etc. Under that spirit, the Provincial Border Guard has counselled local authorities to set up Legal Consultancy Clubs in all coastal communes, wards and towns. These clubs have actively assisted people with legal problems, including fishing ground and fishing equipment disputes, civil contract agreements between fishermen and boat owners, accidents at sea, making contribution to conciliating and minimizing conflicts among the people and maintaining order and security in the locality. Since 2018, the Provincial Border Guard has organized 40 propagating sessions for nearly 3,000 people, exhibited 10 propagating panels on the Directive 01 of Prime Minister and 21 signs on the sea border areas, issued 30,000 leaflets, provided 20 law bookcases, and delivered 5,000 video tapes of legal stories to localities and grassroots units. Cultural propagating groups under the Provincial Border Guard Command have actively given performances in coastal communes, wards and towns, thereby softening the contents of law propagation and dissemination and contributing to conveying the Party’s guidelines, State’s policies and laws to people in a gentle manner.

The Provincial Border Guard’s Party Committee and Command have paid due regard to promoting the synergy of forces, political and social organizations in the locality in order to propagate and disseminate the law with focal points. Accordingly, the functional agencies have cooperated closely with the units of Naval Region 2, Coast Guard Region 4, Provincial Police, Department of Justice, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in opportunely gathering information and formulating plans and contents of law propagation and dissemination for the subjects. In particular, emphasis has been placed on the basic contents of the Law of the Sea of Viet Nam, United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea in 1982, Fisheries Law, and Circulars of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on guiding the protection and development of fisheries resources, registration and technical safety of fishing vessels, etc. Meanwhile, value has been attached to stringently implementing the Government’s Decree 77/2010/NĐ-CP, working closely with the Provincial Public Security in exchanging information, cooperating in the fight against national security, commercial fraud, and social evils, demonstrating the strictness of the law, earning trust and supremacy of the law for the people. In addition, the Provincial Border Guard Command has cooperated with press agencies inside and outside the Army, district and Bac Lieu city radio stations in providing news and articles and organizing law contests to propagate and disseminate laws on a large scale for the people.

In the coming time, the Provincial Border Guard’s Party Committee and Command will continue directing the agencies and units to bring into full play the recorded achievements and make further efforts in propagating and popularizing the law for people in the sea border areas, contributing to building a firm border defence posture, fulfilling political tasks, boosting the sustainable development of the local economy, and firmly protecting the national sovereignty over the seas and islands.

Sr. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Hue, Secretary of the Provincial Border Guard Party Committee

Political Commissar of the Provincial Border Guard