Minister Dung said the delay of the widening of National Road 32 in Hanoi was a “stinging pain.”

Authorities in Hanoi had been slow in clearing much of the site for construction, Dung said, adding that the contractor had promised to complete construction within six months once the site was ready.

Share the difficulties

Representative Nguyen Thi Hoa from Hanoi said the construction could take two or three years to complete while residents had been forced to drive on a road full of potholes.

“After this session, may the [transport] minister visit the street to share the difficulties with residents,” she said.

In response, Dung said he has visited the road every week and understands resident’s difficulties. But he failed to reveal any plan to expedite construction of the road.

‘Modifications’

Nguyen Minh Thuyet, deputy chairman of the NA Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children, asked Minister Dung about several controversial modifications recently made to the Beltway III project in Hanoi.

Dung said a 380-meter section in Thanh Xuan District had been modified to comply with a project to construct an elevated railway.

“The government had authorized the Ministry [of Transport] to modify the design of this section,” he said.

However, he failed to answer Thuyet’s question about why the modification had caused an increase in the project’s budget, saying he had “yet to know the exact amount of the project’s investment capital.”

Online game concerns

Minister Hop, who took the floor for questions for the first time, said the ministry was preparing a document to update circular 60, which was issued in 2006 to manage online gaming.

He said the ministry had mapped out several points it would focus on in the field, including raising awareness among residents and improving regulations and their enforcement.

But representative Nguyen Ngoc Dao said the measures would be insufficient to tackle the moral and mental erosion he said could be attributed to youngsters’ online gaming addictions.

Hop said that online games could not be banned but should be regulated properly.

He also began speaking about the advantages and disadvantages of online games and the internet before being interrupted by representative Nguyen Van Thuan, who said “the representatives were not asking about the pros and cons of online games but they wanted to know if the ministry was responsible for the current situation.”

“Management is supposed to include the issuing of regulations and the enforcement of them but the minister hasn’t talked about enforcement,” Thuan said.

Hop admitted that online gaming had not been managed properly but said the ministry would commit to better management in the future.

Reported by Xuan Toan