Phu Quoc stops officials from going abroad

As ordered by Phu Quoc's Party chief Le Quoc Anh on Wednesday, members and leaders of state agencies, departments, and organizations in the island, along with chiefs and deputy chiefs of local party committees and leaders of commune-level People's Committees, will "temporarily be suspended from traveling abroad," except for those appointed to participate in select.

This measure, according to the Phu Quoc’s Party Committee, aims to "strengthen leadership and focus on resolving key tasks of the city and commune level through the end of 2024."

The tasks include management of land, construction projects, environmental, mineral resources, and public security.

Anh said that this requirement was for local leaders and units to focus on handling a large volume of work in the city and is not a "travel ban" as reported by several websites.

"The information was misunderstood. This is just a directive sent to local party units to temporarily stop traveling abroad, to focus on urgent work," said Anh, emphasizing that "there is no ban on officials traveling abroad to address land violations."

Phu Quoc, covering nearly 600 square kilometers with a population of 150,000 and generating nearly VND8 trillion (US$313.2 million) in annual budget revenue, is Vietnam's largest island and one of the top tourist destinations in the country.

Over the years, the locality has experienced numerous land violations, including encroachments on public and special-use forest land, and marine conservation areas.

Villas built illegally on public land in Phu Quoc Island are dismantled in 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Ngoc Tai

In mid-2022, Kien Giang Province, home to Phu Quoc, established a special task force to inspect land violations on the island and detected 1,744 violations over 685 hectares of public land and forest land.

In addition to many illegally constructed buildings, hotels, and villas, the province also discovered 40 unauthorized constructions in the Phu Quoc marine conservation area exceeding 40,000 hectares, including piers, bars, and bungalows.

Some cases have been transferred to investigative authorities.

Anh, then Kien Giang's deputy chairman, was appointed by the Provincial Party Committee as the Secretary of the Phu Quoc City Party Committee on April 16.