The Brigade 543 under the Military Region 2 is a multidisciplinary engineering unit tasked with maintaining training and combat readiness, constructing national defence works and border patrol roads, carrying out bomb and mine clearance, and taking part in natural disaster prevention and control and search and rescue. It performs a large number of missions in a complicated, dangerous environment, thus facing a lot of difficulties in logistics and technical support. Its construction teams are frequently scattered mainly in the mountainous, isolated, remote areas of 9 provinces with the complex developments in political security and social order and safety. Therefore, each cadre and soldier must be highly responsible and self-aware to observe the State’s law, the Military’s discipline, and the Brigade’s regulations to fulfil their task. To improve the task performance, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have focused their leadership and direction on raising the effectiveness of legal propagation, dissemination, and education for troops as a central solution.

First of all, the Brigade has directed its affiliates to grasp directives and resolutions of higher echelons, particularly the Directive 103/CT-BQP, dated November 28th, 2019 by the Ministry of National Defence on “continuing strengthening discipline education and ensuring safety within the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA),” the General Staff’s Directive 07/CT-TM, dated March 10th, 2020 on realising “the year of discipline - 2020” across the VPA, the Directive 43/CT-BTL, dated December 13th, 2019 by the Military Region 2’s Command on “continuing enhancing discipline management and education and ensuring safety across the Military Region 2’s armed forces” as well as resolutions by the Military Region 2’s Party Committee Standing Bard on legal propagation, dissemination, and education. Grounded on those documents, the Brigade’s Party Committee has issued specialised resolutions on this work, while all-level party committees and commands have included legal education in their resolutions and action plans in accord with their offices and units’ task and particularities. The Brigade’s Party Committee has required the political agency to advise all-level party committees and commands on directing their offices and units to strictly implement legal propagation, dissemination, and education programmes. Specialised political meetings have been effectively held to introduce directives and resolutions on discipline management and safety assurance to all cadres, party members, and the masses. At the same time, the Brigade has promoted the role of cadres and party members, especially the key ones in inspecting the work of legal propagation, dissemination, and education, thereby contributing to raising troops’ law-abiding awareness and culture.

As the Brigade’s affiliates always have to manoeuvre to perform their task in a large, complex, difficult mountainous area, the Brigade’s Command has directed them to renew and diversify the contents, forms, and methods of legal propagation, dissemination, and education so that this work would be carried out in the best way. Offices and units have been required to provide full-time legal education for the forces with stable operations. Emphasis has been placed on laws, directives, guiding documents, and regulations directly relevant to troops’ observance of law and units’ discipline management, such as the Law on managing and using weapons, explosive materials, and support tools (2017), the 1999 Law on VPA’s officers (amended and supplemented in 2008 and 2014), the Penal Code of 2015 (amended and supplemented in 2017), the Law on road traffic (2008), the Law on prevention and control of harms of liquor and beer (2019), the Prime Minister’s Directive 12/CT-TTg, dated April 25th, 2019 on preventing and fighting against crimes and violations of law relating to “black credit,” and the Directive 71-CT/ĐU, dated March 26th, 2020 by the Military Region 2’s Party Committee Standing Board on enhancing the fight against COVID-19 within the Military Region 2’s armed forces. Great value has been attached to improving all-level law lecturers’ legal knowledge, teaching method, and responsibility, and applying means of information technology to making lectures more attractive and convincing.

The legal propagation, dissemination, and education contest of 2019

As for its construction teams, the Brigade has brought into play their facilities and visual aids, while organising legal education into many different lessons properly to ensure that all cadres and soldiers would be able to attend. Besides, the Brigade has developed legal propagation, dissemination, and education into audio files and employed mobile loudspeakers in rest hours and days off to make the propagation process more attractive. At the same time, it has required its offices and units to develop plans for refresher courses on legal propagation, dissemination, and education for cadres of construction teams so that they could both carry out inspections and take charge of political education and legal dissemination. As a result, when working within the Brigade’s construction teams, those cadres have always fulfilled their professional task and the work of legal propagation, dissemination, and education, making significant contributions to saving human and material resources.

Based on the legal dissemination and education programmes, units of the Brigade have selected basic articles of law directly relating to their work and daily life for troops to study, while combining legal dissemination and education with political education, ideological management, the Political and Cultural Day, and the Legal Study Day so as to attract the participation of a large number of cadres and soldiers. The “Legal Bookcase” within the Brigade’s Library and Ho Chi Minh’s Hall has been well maintained with hundreds of books and newspapers for troops’ reading and reference. Due attention has been paid to studying “one article of law on a weekly basis” and “the regulations on managing and using explosive materials” as well as other ones relating to troops’ work and daily life as “the guide” to handling violations of law and discipline. Besides, consideration has been given to assessing the outcome of legal propagation, dissemination, and education in a close, serious manner, combining assignments with written, multiple-choice, and oral tests and re-examination. On a quarterly basis, the Brigade has invited leaders of the Regional Procuracy 21, the Military Region 2’s Criminal Investigation Division, and the Public Security Office of Tam Nong district, Phu Tho province to deliver specialised topics relating to the law and discipline situation both inside and outside the VPA to raise cadres and soldiers’ observance of the Military’s discipline and the State’s law.

Additionally, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have directed offices, units, and construction teams to well conduct the mass mobilisation work, closely cooperate with local party committees and authorities in grasping religious activities, free immigration, and illegal missionary work, and propose measures of legal propagation and education for locals and the handling of situations to avoid passivity. Doing so has enabled the Brigade to cement its relations with local party committees, authorities, and citizens and contribute to building its safe, strong stationed areas.

The Brigade has closely combined the work of legal propagation, dissemination, and education with the improvements in discipline management, military standard order building, and emulation movements and campaigns. It has required its affiliates to well carry out the ideological work and especially correctly grasp each soldier’s task performance, relationships, and daily life. On a monthly and quarterly basis, they have been asked to deliver reports to the Brigade as the basis for working towards measures of troop education and management. All officers, professional service men and women, and employees have been prohibited from drinking alcohol within offices and units. The Brigade’s competent agencies and affiliates have strictly maintained the regulations on wearing crash helmets during cadres and employees’ exit and entrance. Besides, the Brigade’s affiliates and construction teams have strictly complied with the regulations on COVID-19 prevention and control. Leaders and commanders of offices and units have frequently carried out inspections to opportunely warn troops, particularly within construction teams to obey discipline and stringently handle offences. Meanwhile, emulation movements across the Brigade have been organised effectively as an incentive for troops’ self-improvement and units’ better task performance. Offices and units of the Brigade have strictly implemented the 13th Politburo’s Conclusion 01-KL/TW, dated May 18th, 2021 on continuing to realise the 12th Politburo’s Directive 05-CT/TW, the Resolution of the 12th Party Central Committee’s 4th Plenum, the Campaign entitled “promoting tradition, devoting talent, deserving to be Uncle Ho’s soldiers” in the new period, the Campaign titled “managing and exploiting weapons and technical equipment sustainably, effectively, safely, economically, and ensuring traffic safety,” and the movement of “green, clean, safe border” as an important yardstick for collective and individual evaluation and commendation.  

Thanks to those above-mentioned measures, the Engineering Brigade 543 under the Military Region 2 has obtained brilliant achievements in the work of legal propagation, dissemination, and education. Its cadres and soldiers have made a considerable positive change in their observance of the State’s law and the VPA’s discipline. It has witnessed no serious violation of discipline or safety regulations during training and labour, while the rate of normal violations has been below 0.2%. Those good results have allowed the Brigade to earn the title of “Determined to Win Unit” for many consecutive years, build up its tradition of “loyalty, unity, proactiveness, creativity, and victory,” and deserve the Heroic Engineering Force’s tradition of “victoriously opening routes.”

Sr. Col. NGUYEN CONG PHUONG, Commissar of the Brigade