Reporting on the acceptance and explanation of the draft Law, Chairman of the National Defense and Security Committee Le Tan Toi said that based on the opinions of delegates discussed in the hall on May 24, the National Assembly Standing Committee has developed two options to seek the opinions of delegates. One is to immediately establish a Fund for timely use in case of disaster or incident, and the other is to establish it only in case of emergency, as decided by the Prime Minister.

As a result, 374/494 delegates gave their opinions, of which 68.36% (255 delegates) agreed with Option 1. The National Assembly Standing Committee accepted and regulated the content of Option 1 as shown in Article 40. Accordingly, the Civil Defense Fund is a non-budgetary state financial fund, established at the central and provincial levels to mobilize social resources to support civil defense activities.

The Civil Defense Fund is used for emergency relief of food, drinking water, medicine and essential supplies; support for repairing and building houses, medical facilities and schools in locations affected by incidents and disasters. The Fund is formed from voluntary contributions from domestic and foreign organizations and individuals; and regulated sources from non-budgetary state financial funds related to response and recovery activities for incidents and disasters.

The fund will support civil defense activities that the state budget has not invested in or has not met requirements; the regulation between the civil defense fund and extra-budgetary state financial funds is carried out in urgent cases.

The Government shall detail the establishment, management and use of the civil defense fund; the regulation between the civil defense fund and extra-budgetary state financial funds related to activities of responding to and overcoming the consequences of incidents and disasters.

On the afternoon of May 24, explaining to the National Assembly some contents of the draft Law on Civil Defense, General Phan Van Giang, Minister of National Defense, said that the Government chose to establish the fund before the incidents occurred because "it stemmed from the most recent lesson of responding to Covid-19".

He said that when Covid-19 broke out, the armed forces and health sector were asked by the Prime Minister to urgently set up field hospitals in the epidemic areas. However, a Minister said that building field hospitals at this time was very difficult, and equipment worth tens of billions of dong could not be purchased at this time. However, the army was still able to set up 16 500-1,000-bed hospitals in many localities from the North to the South thanks to the effective use of available resources.

The mobile vehicles that the Army usually uses to produce oxygen for special forces have been mobilized to produce oxygen for all hospitals during the pandemic. "Obviously, we need reserve forces, capital, and funds. If we just set it up at that time, we will fail," said the Minister of Defense.

According to General Phan Van Giang, the drafting agency has calculated not to increase the payroll because the fund will be managed by the Ministry of Finance, similar to the vaccine fund, when necessary, the Prime Minister can decide immediately.

The Civil Defense Law takes effect from July 1, 2024.

Son Ha