Disasters and emergency response

Vietnam and four other countries in the Mekong region will receive Japanese aid worth $115.3 million to combat Covid-19 and work for sustainable development. Japan announced the decision at the 13th Mekong-Japan Foreign Ministers’ Meeting held online on Thursday and co-chaired by Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister ...

Over 800 health-care workers in southern provinces of Laos are calling on authorities to pay them for extra hours worked this year in hospitals and quarantine centers while trying to control the spread of coronavirus, according to sources in the one-party communist state. However, official sources ...

Authorities in Kasy district of Vientiane province have barred all vehicles from using a section of Road No 4C going to Nan district in Luang Prabang province after it was blocked following landslides. Director of Kasy district’s Public Works and Transport office, Mr Phan Namvong, told ...

Five Yay Ma Hsay – or ‘unwashed’ as the jade miners of northern Myanmar are known – arrived early Thursday at the pit to scrape out a living on a scraggy hillside, lured by the prospect of finding a stone that could transform their lives.  But ...

The coronavirus crisis has severely affected livelihoods, local industries and the economy in general. It has also disrupted world trade, supply chains and also the production of food and agricultural products and commodities. According to Samarendu Mohanty, Asia Regional Director at the International Potato Center, ...

The People’s Committee of the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh has decided to provide relief worth more than 40 billion VND (1.7 million USD) to more than 28,000 farming households to revive agriculture, which was severely affected by drought and saltwater intrusion in the 2019 – ...

Eight families in Vietnam’s southernmost Ca Mau Province have been left destitute after their riverside houses were swallowed by erosion over the weekend. Residents near a tributary of Cai Lon River in Tam Giang Commune, Nam Can District of Ca Mau were woken near midnight Sunday ...

Thailand’s economy is expected to be impacted severely by the COVID-19 pandemic, shrinking by at least 5 percent in 2020 and taking more than two years to return to pre-COVID-19 GDP output levels, according to the World Bank’s latest Thailand Economic Monitor, released today. The COVID-19 pandemic ...

Laos will establish the National Center for the Quality Inspection of Foodstuff and Beverage to ensure the product is safe for consumption. The National standards Certification and Quality Inspection Center under Laos Ministry of Science and Technology on Tuesday (June 30) signed a memorandum of agreement ...

Laos is pushing ahead with a hydropower project on the Mekong River, despite reservations aired by neighbouring countries over its potential to harm fisheries and farming downstream, the Mekong River Commission (MRC) said on Wednesday. The 1,400-megawatt (MW) Luang Prabang project will be Laos’s third and ...