COVER STORY  : Getting back on the rails

    Saigon: "The road to reconstruction," Lieutenant-General Tran Van Tra told his audience, "will be a long and difficult one requiring the participation of all." As chairman of the Saigon Military Management Committee (MMC), General Tra has possibly been the only official spokesman on matters of future policy in the now one-month-old Government of South Vietnam. He has held two press conferences and given only the barest hints of the kind of programme the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) intends to follow in the months of reconstruction ahead. 

     In the first weeks following the taking of Saigon, most observers were impressed by how quickly internal communications, roads, trains, sea and river ports were restored and began functioning -- in many cases better than they ever had. But very soon the talk in the streets shifted to the two principal subjects of concern: the banks and employment. 

     Financial transactions in South Vietnam came to a halt several days before the fall of Saigon and while the PRG has ordered bank workers to report to work each day, the banks have not been open for business. The Government has issued only one directive on banking. On May 10 it established the National Bank of Vietnam as the official reserve bank and authorized the use of the old Saigon-regime currency. However, the use of foreign currency, gold or other precious metals and cheques in any transaction was forbidden. 

     In the absence of official information, speculation is rampant about the banks, which, it is said, will open shortly; and when they do, the people will be given a short time to exchange all their old piastres for new North Vietnamese dong.

     In Danang, some banks have reopened on very restricted hours, with depositors being permitted to withdraw only one-third of their savings. Liberation Radio continues to place the blame for the state of the banks on ex-president Nguyen Van Thieu, who, it is said, took most of the country's gold with him when he fled to Taiwan. 

     The absence of normal banking operations is beginning to create hardships, especially among city people. All businesses, including foreign companies, have been ordered to continue as before, and the laying-off of employees has been forbidden. However, workers have not received pay cheques since the end of April and an increasing number of urban people are becoming desperate for cash. 

     However, the new regime has begun some moves towards alleviating the problem. Workers in several Government agencies were last week paid a month's wages, depending on their work and their politics. The highest new salary for a bureaucrat was said to be about VNP 10,000 (about US$10). Reports from Nha Trang and Can Tho suggest the PRG has begun paying Government workers in a combination of currency and rice. Workers in Can Tho are said to have been receiving about VNP 1,000 a month and about 20 kilograms of rice. This suggests that salaries are far less than under the Thieu regime, with prices about the same or as much as 20% higher than before the takeover. 

     The second immediate problem the PRG must tackle is unemployment, which, including roughly 1 million ex-soldiers, runs close to 3 million from a total population of 21 million. Unlike Cambodia, the PRG does not appear to be forcing large numbers of people into manual labour. 

     Although there are many skeptics in the still fairly large Saigon-French business community, it appears, at least for the time being, that the Government wants the operation of foreign firms to continue. Several French business leaders were recently invited to Independence Palace and advised that some French firms would be asked to stay on indefinitely. Heading the PRG list was the Michelin and other rubber plantations in Dau Tieng and Tay Ninh provinces. Other major French firms in Saigon, such as Brasserie Glacier Indochine (BGI), Denis Freres and Lucia, will, apparently, also be allowed to operate. The import-export firm, Lucia, distinguished itself during the first week after the takeover by actually making money in the sale of thousands of bicycles, which the company apparently had on hand ready to take advantage of the petrol shortage. 

     Some conversations with lower-echelon southern cadres suggest that the new Saigon leadership might like to pursue a dual approach to the South's economy. It would emphasize a rigid communization of agriculture, while encompassing a rather more independent commercial and industrial sector. The latter effort might include the encouragement of tightly-controlled foreign investment in order to rapidly build the rubber, timber and other industries. 

     Implementation of any of these policies depends, of course, on a Government structure which is still rather hazy. 

     There remains little indication of what personalities will have the most say in the new Government. The formation of a functioning civilian government to replace the military committees may have been delayed because of squabbling among factions advocating various timetables for the reunification of North and South. Disagreements on economic policy may also have caused a set-back. 

     At a reception on May 18, several North Vietnamese and PRG leaders made plain that both economic and reunification issues were linked and both, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Madame Nguyen Thi Binh put it, were "under active discussion." There were also strong indications that the issue of reunification was the top priority. 

     It is always assumed in Western circles that the Hanoi leadership will have the final veto power over any programmes the southern communists might initiate. In fact, those that appear to be the leading southerners in the PRG seem to be very northern in thought. Both Pham Hung, a leader born in the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long and listed as No. 1 in a roster of leaders printed in Saigon's Liberation Daily, and Nguyen Huu Tho, the Cholon lawyer most visible in the southern leadership, take the Hanoi line on reunification. 

     This line is, of course, that unification will be pursued as quickly as possible. However, optimism has been voiced by some former Third Force Saigon intellectuals and elsewhere that Hanoi will listen to Saigon's views. The hope is that even with reunification de facto or official, the North may give the South some latitude in deciding its own development. 

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