Military Region 7 (MR7) is a key area with a geo-strategic location in terms of politics, economy, culture, society, national defence, security, and foreign affairs of the South and the whole country. In recent years, due to the high requirements of the task of protecting the area and the cause of safeguarding the Fatherland in the new situation, the tasks of MR7 have therefore changed. Particularly, the fact that the MR7 was an area with a high percentage of infected people and a place of prevention and control of the Covid-19 pandemic to help, treat, and protect people with the largest scale in the country, etc. has had a significant impact on not only military and national defence tasks but also the work of assurance of MR7’s armed forces. Accordingly, there is an increasing need for technical assurance for the armed forces in terms of quantity and quality with increasing frequency and intensity, especially the technical, weapon and equipment assurance for combat readiness, training, defensive area drills, and prevention and control of epidemics. Meanwhile, although some of the weapons, vehicles, and technical equipment have been upgraded recently, most of them have degraded after many years of use, thus creating difficulties during exploitation and use.
The technical infrastructure has been built, consolidated, and upgraded, yet it has not met the requirements and tasks; funding and materials for technical work are still limited; there is a lack of technical officers and staff in some units and their qualifications and capabilities have not kept up with the development of science and technology and the practical requirements, etc. In that context, the Technical Department has actively advised MR7’s Party Committee, and Command, party committees and commanders of units as well as promoting its core role in building and comprehensively implementing measures in terms of ideology, organisation, and professional expertise to renovate and improve the quality and efficiency of technical work, helping MR7’s armed forces to successfully fulfil military and national defence tasks, thus maintaining political security, social order, and safety in the locality.
First, the Party Committee and Directorate of the Technical Department have actively advised MR7’s Party Committee and Command to consolidate the organisation and build a contingent of qualified and capable technical officers and staff as the core of technical work. Accordingly, agencies and units step up political and ideological education to raise awareness and responsibility for soldiers, especially technical officers and staff. Importance is attached to fostering political will, professional ethics, command and staff skills, management and administration styles, etc., fulfilling the task of managing, using, and preserving weapons and equipment. At the same time, promoting the role of party committees, commanders, and technical officers and staff in leading, directing, and implementing technical work; upholding the spirit of “proactiveness, creativity, and self-reliance”, overcoming difficulties, well implementing the Emulation Movement, and promoting learning and following Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and styles, thus creating motivation to improve the quality and efficiency of technical work.
In order to ensure the balance of qualifications and skilled technicians among different specialisations, the Technical Department actively advises MR7’s Party Committee and Command to consolidate the organisation at all levels tailored to the characteristics of each unit. Reviewing and assessing the quantity and quality of technical officers and staff at all levels; formulating plans for training and training technical officers and staff in association with using them; synchronously implementing measures to build a contingent of technical officers and staff with comprehensive capabilities and standardised qualifications and skills; focusing on training skilled technicians and officers as the core and spearhead in different specialisations, units as well as new generation weapon maintenance technician. The units focus on diversifying forms of training and retraining technical officers and staff; closely combining on-spot training with sending officers and staff for intensive training; strictly maintaining the order and the quality of technical training and retraining at all levels. To make a breakthrough in “Improving training quality”, agencies and units actively renovate training content and methods close to the subjects and the practical requirements of technical work; pay due attention to training to ensure technical skills in combat and building defensive areas. Focus on training technical officers to master command and staff skills, advise, coordinate, and ensure technical supplies at tactical levels in each form of combat. Importance is attached to training to improve manoeuvrability and situation handling skills for technical detachments when marching and fighting in conditions where the enemy uses high-tech weapons, etc. Besides, the units have strengthened specialised training, organised contests and sports festivals, and contests to raise workers’ qualifications for the subjects, etc., which are important in fostering the contingent of officers and staff, thus building strong and comprehensive technical agencies and detachments at all levels. By taking these measures, many difficulties and limitations of human resources have been overcome, significantly improving the sector’s ability to perform tasks.
Special interest is paid to leading and directing the regularity building of technical work, ensuring the safety of weapons, equipment, warehouses, workshops and labour. Due to the increasingly demanding tasks of the MR7, the scale and level of use of weapons, ammunition, explosives, and technical equipment for training, combat readiness, prevention and control of epidemics and regular activities are getting larger. Therefore, safety assurance is becoming more and more important. In order to achieve this goal, the Technical Department advises the MR7 to plan and build more than 90 new provincial warehouses for the following units: the Ho Chi Minh City Command, the Military Commands of Binh Duong, Long An, Ba Ria - Vung Tau, Dong Nai, Binh Thuan, Tay Ninh provinces as well as more than 60 warehouses at district and battalion levels. Technical forces in agencies and units regularly maintain and strictly observe safety rules, such as inspecting weapons and equipment before use, organising technical inspection, testing the explosive rate of ammunition, fire equipment for live-fire training missions, etc. Weapons used for firing live ammunition and mobile vehicles have to be inspected, maintained, and recorded in order to confirm their technical status before being handed over and put into use. Additionally, technical units well organise the repair and synchronisation of weapons and equipment at each level; focus on improving the quality of maintenance and repair at the units, closely combine repair at stations and workshops with mobile repair. To improve the quality of maintenance, repair, and sealing, the units focus on adopting new technology, supplementing equipment for the repair workshop to ensure the backup capabilities for different situations as well as 100% repair of weapons and equipment at all levels, especially when repairing new generation cars. At the same time, actively mobilise resources to strengthen the existing warehouse system, speed up the planned project of building new warehouses. Strictly maintaining the regime of exploitation, operation and production of equipment to promote the efficiency of investment capital.
In addition, agencies and units maintain well implementation of the Campaign “Manage and exploit weapons and technical equipment in a good, sustainable, safe, and economical manner and Traffic Safety” (Campaign 50) in association with promoting learning and following Ho Chi Minh’s thought, ethics, and styles according to Conclusion No. 01 - KL/TW of the Politburo (13th tenure) on continuing to implement the Directive No. 05-CT/TW by taking practical actions. The Department actively advises and aids the Steering Committee of the Campaign 50 in propaganda and education to raise awareness, sense of responsibility, and self-discipline for all the subjects. Agencies and units develop detailed plans to implement the Campaign with appropriate guidelines and measures; include the content of ensuring occupational safety and traffic safety into the training programmes for technical officers and staff; build traffic safety sites and strengthen measures to manage vehicles participating in traffic. Agencies and units have concretised the technical sector’s criteria into the annual assessment, comment and recommendation of party organisations, agencies and units. Strengthening the inspection, reviewing, summary, lesson drawing, assessment of the results of technical work, Campaign 50 and emulation and commendation work; building and replicating good examples, “good people, good deeds” in technical work, creating a strong spillover effect for everyone to learn and follow. At the same time, promoting research and initiatives, improving techniques, encouraging research and application of science and technology in technical assurance. Effectively using funds, saving materials and fuel, making the most of available resources; improving the quality and design of products to meet the requirements.
Promoting the spirit of self-reliance, dynamism, creativity, initiative, sensitivity, solidarity, and unity, officers, party members, soldiers and employees of MR7’s Technical Sector strive to successfully fulfil all the assigned tasks, thus improving the overall quality and combat strength of MR7’s armed forces to meet the requirements and tasks of building the Army, strengthening national defence and protecting the Fatherland.
Senior Colonel LE HOAI NAM, Head of MR7’s Technical Department