Ba Ria - Vung Tau Provincial Border Guard is tasked with managing and protecting sovereignty and security of nearly 100 km of coastline and 100 nautical miles of inland waters. The Province's sea border area and islands cover six districts and Vung Tau City, including 26 communes, wards, and towns. In the Province’s border area, there are 47 foreign businesses and representative offices that are in operation. There are also 35 national and international seaports. Annually, more than 5,000 foreign ships importing, exporting, and transiting through Ba Ria - Vung Tau seaports. This is an area with beaches, tourist resorts, and potentials and advantages for the maritime economic development of the Province and the country. However, it is also a hot spot of smuggling, trade fraud, and all kinds of crimes that are active with multiple sophisticated and complicated tricks, etc. Therefore, to maintain political security, social order, and safety in the border areas, waters, and islands is a regular task that every cadre and soldier of Ba Ria - Vung Tau Border Guard must undertake and fulfill. To be effective, the Provincial Party Border Guard Committee and Command have led and directed the subordinate units to actively advise the local Party committees and authorities and closely coordinate with departments, agencies, and mass organisations in promoting law propagation and dissemination to create a strong change in awareness and sense of law observance for the people and contribute to ensuring political, social order, and safety, promoting socio-economic development, and strengthening the all-people border posture and people security posture in the area.

Border guard of Ba Ria - Vung Tau Port conduct law propagation (Photo: bienphong.com.vn)

First of all, the Border Guard Command has actively advised the Provincial Party Committee, People's Council, and Provincial People's Committee to well implement the superiors’ resolutions, directives, and regulations on law propagation and dissemination for the people, especially the Scheme entitled “Strengthening law dissemination and education for officials and people in border areas and islands in the period of 2017 - 2021” and directing the districts, Phu My town, and Vung Tau City to develop the plans for law propagation and dissemination for the people to suit the level and perceptions of each object and the local characteristics and tasks. During implementation, the Border Guard Command has promoted its core and specialised role in coordinating with departments, branches, and localities in ensuring proper contents and programs of law education for objects. It has also strengthened the inspection and supervision of the implementation of agencies, units, and localities, especially coastal communes, wards, and towns, and Con Dao District. Creative and effective methods have been flexibly applied to create a positive change in awareness and sense of responsibility of officials and people in understanding and using laws as means and tools to protect their rights and interests to actively contribute to implementing the local tasks, maintaining political security, social order, and safety, and firmly protecting border sovereignty and security in the waters in charge.

One of the important solutions to make positive changes in law propagation and dissemination is to improve the quality of the contingent of law reporters and disseminators. The Provincial Border Guard Command has always actively advised the Provincial Party Committee and People's Committee and coordinated with departments, agencies, branches, and localities to select and open training courses to foster professions improve qualifications and knowledge for law reporters and disseminators. Accordingly, the Province’s law reporters and disseminators have acquired propagation methods and skills that are easy to understand and remember and attractive to meet the requirements of assigned tasks. This is the core force in law propagation and dissemination for the people in the coastal border areas of the Province. Besides, the Provincial Border Guard has also focused on building law bookshelves and bookcases at units and localities and firmly grasped the situation and conditions facilities, people’s intellectual level, and legal knowledge and the need for law study of officials and people in the coastal border areas. At the same time, it has coordinated with localities in consolidating and upgrading law bookshelves and bookcases at communes, towns, and border posts. Currently, 100% of border posts, communes, wards, and towns have law bookcases, and 100% of villages and hamlets have law bookshelves with over 1,500 law books (38,500 books in total) and hundreds of DVDs. Law books and newspapers have been regularly circulated and supplemented to meet the need for study and research to contribute to improving legal knowledge and culture for officials and people in the Province’s coastal border areas, waters, and islands.

For the work of law propagation, dissemination, and education to be relevant to each object, the Provincial Border Guard has coordinated with departments, branches, and localities in renewing contents and programs and diversifying implementation forms and methods. As the Province’s coastal border areas involve different forces with unequal qualifications and levels of awareness, the Border Guard Command has instructed border units to propagate and disseminate laws to focus on objects in the areas. Regarding the contents, attention has been paid to propagating and disseminating new legal documents and those are in service of the Province's economic, cultural, and social development, defence, and security tasks, especially the documents related to national borders and sea and island sovereignty. Concurrently, it has also coordinated with departments and branches in advising the localities to consolidate 26 legal consultancy clubs at communes, wards, and towns (including local officials, the Police, and the Border Guards), organising free judicial consultancy and support, answering legal issues of the people, and doing well the work of grassroots conciliation to contribute to timely and radically settling conflicts among the population. The Border Guard Command has also printed documents on the sea and island sovereignty of Vietnam and the protection of the sovereignty and security of the coastal border areas, compiled law projects to propagate veterans, the elderly, key officials, and Party members of communes and towns, organised training courses to foster defence and security knowledge for religious dignitaries, Youth Union officials, and people. The people have been propagated about management, protection, and exploitation of aquatic and marine products, management and licensing of fishing activities for fishermen, observance of the regulations of the coastal border areas, protection of the sea sovereignty, and fighting against activities that violate the maritime laws. The forms have been diverse, and, through the media, articles and legal documents related to the sea and island sovereignty have been reported in the Column entitled “For the national border sovereignty” on the Province’s website, and the radio systems at districts, cities, communes, wards, and towns, thereby, creating conditions for systematic propagation of legal documents on the national borders and sea and island sovereignty of the Fatherland to contribute to building awareness of territorial sovereignty and sense of law observance for the people. The Provincial Border Guard has also coordinated with the Provincial Cultural Center and twinning units in organising cultural propaganda festivals at the coastal border of the southern provinces and cities in combination with organising artistic performances at the districts and cities ​​in the Province. In particular, the integration of legal propagation in the festivals and performances has created a widespread of sense of territorial sea and island sovereignty and aroused national solidarity and patriotism among the people. Annually, conferences have been held to learn from experiences of law violation in the Province to promptly take appropriate measures in propagation and education for people to strictly observe laws.

Promoting the achieved results, Ba Ria - Vung Tau Province Border Guard Party Committee and Command continue leading and directing the better implementation of law propagation and dissemination, which is considered a key task of the Border Guard work, to contribute to raising law awareness among the people and creating a widespread mass movement in maintaining political security, social order, and safety in the waters and islands in charge and firmly protecting the sovereignty over the sea, islands, and sacred continental shelf of the Fatherland.

Senior Colonel DINH QUOC TUAN, Commissar of the Provincial Border Guard