Coast Guard Region 3 is tasked with maintaining combat readiness, defending national sovereignty, sovereign rights, jurisdiction, and interests, protecting natural resources, safeguarding assets, rights, and legitimate benefits of agencies, organisations, and individuals, preventing and fighting crimes and violations of law, ensuring security, order, and safety, conducting search and rescue operations, and taking part in settling environmental incidents in the sea stretching from Cu Lao Xanh (Gia Lai province) to Dinh An (Vinh Long province), including Truong Sa Islands and the Fatherland’s southern continental shelf. This is a large sea with harsh hydrology and climate conditions as well as dynamic, complex economic and commercial activities. Violations of national sovereignty, sovereign rights, and continental shelf by foreign vessels, together with smuggling, trade frauds, and illegal transport of goods have been on the increase. Meanwhile, the Region’s flotillas and specialised offices are stationed in different areas, conduct prolonged, independent missions at sea, encounter various types of elements, and possess limited equipment and means. Those difficulties have greatly impacted on troops’ ideology, psychology, life, and task performance. Hence, the Region’s Party Committee and Command have formulated comprehensive guidelines and measures of leadership and direction over the Region’s tasks, with priority given to enhancing law education, discipline management, and safety assurance.

Conducting law propagation for fishermen

In order to achieve uniformity in leadership and direction, based on resolutions, directives, and guidance by the Party, the Central Military Commission, the Ministry of National Defence, and particularly the Vietnam Coast Guard’s Party Committee and Command on law education and discipline management, the Region’s Party Committee has issued a specialised Resolution for this work; all-level party committees and commands have grasped the actual situation of regularity building and observance of discipline among their troops as well as law-abiding awareness among fishermen at sea, concretised the Region Party Committee’s Resolution into proper goals, targets, and measures, and made action plans relevant to their units’ particularities. In their quarterly, monthly resolutions, party organisations have evaluated the outcome of leadership and direction over law education, discipline management, and safety assurance, while opportunely supplementing new content and programs. The Region’s political bureau and Coordinating Council for Law Dissemination and Education have promoted their core role in designing and executing plans for collaboration with provincial-level Commissions for Information, Education, and Mass Mobilisation and press agencies both inside and outside the Military in law dissemination among citizens, assisting offices and units in law education for troops, conducting inspections, and proposing measures to raise the quality of this work. Offices and units across the Region have seriously realised their yearly action plans for law dissemination and education, strictly maintaining weekly, monthly briefings on ideological situation, public opinion, discipline management, and political issues, thus opportunely handling ideological developments and effectively preventing violation of law and discipline among their troops. The Region has always closely combined emulation movements and campaigns with the enhancement of its troops’ law-abiding awareness, opportunely commended outstanding collectives and individuals, and adopted timely measures to deal with shortcomings. As a result, the Region’s regularity building and discipline management work has been increasingly effective; law-abiding awareness and culture among cadres, soldiers, and citizens have been raised; the Region has witnessed no serious violation of discipline for many consecutive years, while the rate of normal disciplinary violations has been below 0.2%.

In the process, the Region has actively, creatively renewed and diversified forms and methods of law propagation and education in accordance with the particularities of each office and unit. Based on their functions and tasks, offices and units across the Region have identified key points in their plans of law education, with a focus on directives and guidance on regularity building and discipline management, specialised topics about law enforcement at sea, and the actual situation of discipline management across the entire Military. In terms of form and methodology, offices and units across the Region have integrated law dissemination and education with combat training, regularity building, and discipline management, flexibly applying forms of propagation, such as news, articles, and reports on bulletin boards and internal radio systems, contests about knowledge of law, and skits during cultural and artistic events, strictly maintaining the Legal Study Day and the Political and Cultural Day at grass-roots level, well implementing models, i.e. “Vietnam Coast Guard law handbook”, “learning one article of law on a daily basis”, and “law bookcase”. At the same time, offices and units across the Region have required their cadres, party members, youth union members, and women’s union members to write commitments to self-improvement, including observance of law and discipline and carried out conferences to review these staff members’ commitments every six months and on a yearly basis. As for young cadres, new graduates, and new soldiers, units of the Region have organised forums and talk shows with topics relevant to troops’ psychology and age ranges to equip troops with knowledge of law and life skills. The Region has directed units performing their prolonged tasks at sea to take advantage of social networks (Zalo, Viber, Facebook) to convey the content of law education and dissemination integrated with videos and images, thus enabling cadres and soldiers to easily access law-related information. The Region has also collaborated with other agencies and units, such as provincial-level Newspapers and Radio - Television Stations, Regional-level Military Procuracies and Courts, and local Public Security, Youth Unions, and Women’s Unions to carry out exchange programs, law propagation and education, and talk shows. As a result, cadres and soldiers have acquired basic knowledge of the State’s laws and the Military’s discipline, developing “immunity” against social evils, heightening “rule of law”, self-improvement, and the virtues of “Uncle Ho’s Soldiers” - Coast Guard Soldiers.

Providing support for a fishing boat at sea

Grounded in Plan 567/KH-BTL, dated 8 February 2024, by the Region Command to execute the Project on “promoting the People’s Army’s role in law dissemination and education and encouraging the people to comply with the law at grass-roots level in the period of 2021 - 2027”, offices and units across the Region have conducted law propagation for cadres, party members, youth union members, students, citizens, and especially fishermen via diverse forms and methods; they have maintained coordination to organise propagation conferences, deploying propagation teams and groups for direct law propagation at residential areas, docks, ports, and seas, combining oral propagation with knowledge contests, cultural exchange programs, and topics-based videos in order to increase the attractiveness of propagation work. Notably, the Region has collaborated with localities to successfully organise the Contest entitled “I love my Fatherland’s seas and islands” for secondary schools from 6 provinces and municipalities in its stationed areas, with the participation of a large number of teachers and students, contributing to fostering patriotism, national pride, and a sense of responsibility towards the protection of national sacred sovereignty over seas and islands. Via twinning activities, mass mobilisation, and patrols, offices and units across the Region have distributed thousands of law-related leaflets and handbooks to citizens. At the same time, the Region has collaborated with 54 central and local press agencies to design and implement programs and plans on sea and island propagation in tandem with law dissemination and education for the people. As a result, the number of violations of foreign waters by Vietnamese fishermen has been reduced; fishermen’s awareness of the Party’s lines and the State’s laws and policies has been unceasingly raised as the basis for enhancing diplomatic work, fostering sustainable marine economic development, and firmly protecting national sovereignty over seas and islands.

Additionally, the Region’s Party Committee and Command have closely combined law education with discipline management and safety assurance. Offices and units across the Region have strictly maintained regularity building and discipline management, while requiring their cadres to “eat with, live with, and work with” soldiers. Offices and units have formulated specific statutes appropriate to the training of troops, strictly prohibiting all officers and professional service men and women from drinking alcohol during lunch break and working hours, banning non-commissioned officers and soldiers from both smoking and drinking. In troop management work, the Region has required all-level cadres to grasp their soldiers’ profiles, family circumstances, and social relationships and increase interaction with their soldiers. As for new soldiers, in addition to coordination with localities to grasp their profiles, all-level leaders and commanders have been required to grasp these troops’ capabilities, moral qualities, fitness, and social relationships via assessments of localities and families for the sake of close, effective management. Prior to difficulty, complex missions or sensitive moments, such as deployment for combat readiness, exercises, national holidays, reception of new soldiers, and demobilisation of soldiers, party committees and commands of offices and units across the Region have always grasped troops’ ideological developments to opportunely adopt measures of leadership and direction. Offices and units have stringently maintained daily, weekly regulations, stepping up regularity building, renewing working methods and style, fostering self-awareness of observance of the State’s laws, the Military’s discipline, and internal statutes.

In the upcoming time, in order to better fulfil all assigned tasks, the Region’s Party Committee and Command will focus their leadership and direction on further raising the effectiveness of law education, discipline management, and safety assurance.

Sr. Col. LE VAN TU

Political Commissar of the Region