A helpline that serves to protect Vietnamese citizens and legal persons in foreign countries was officially put into operation at a ceremony in Hanoi on Monday.
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Accordingly, overseas Vietnamese who need help in emergency cases can call 00.84.4.62.844.844, which was inaugurated yesterday in the presence of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and the leaders of the Vietnam Military Telecommunications Group (Viettel), which operates the line.
The line operates 24/7 and the phone charge is the same as that applied to a call made to a landline telephone of Viettel.
Speaking at the ceremony, Deputy PM Minh stressed that the telephone line will be a very useful tool for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to improve the effectiveness of the protection of Vietnamese citizens and legal persons abroad.
The telephonists of the hotline will give support to Vietnamese citizens abroad in emergencies such as passport loss; traffic accidents or illness; arrest or imprisonment; piracy, robberies, women and children trafficking; and other cases.
The line will also facilitate Vietnamese citizens in seeking assistance from Vietnamese representative agencies abroad.
Calls made to the line will be recorded and the telephonists will coordinate to offer assistance to the callers, according to Nguoi Lao Dong (Laborer) newspaper.
In complex cases, the Consular Department will handle them and can ask Vietnamese embassies in relevant countries to contact the callers to offer help to them when necessary, Nguoi Lao Dong said.
The helpline does not serve as a channel to answer consular-related queries, but telephonists will still reply to questions on basic and simple issues, said Nguyen Huu Trang, head of the ministry’s Consular Department.
As for complicated questions, telephonists of the line will put the callers through to four other phone lines of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The leaders of Viettel said the line can handle over 1,500 phone calls every day and this figure can be increased when necessary.
Currently, Vietnam has diplomatic relations with nearly 200 countries, the ministry said.
The number of Vietnamese people working abroad is now over 500,000 and that of Vietnamese students in foreign countries is more than 100,000.
There are also over 200,000 Vietnamese women who are living abroad along with their foreign husbands.
In addition, the number of Vietnamese people taking tours of foreign countries is increasingly growing.
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