The sixth International Trade Exhibition and Conference on Analytical Laboratory Equipment and Technology, Biotechnology and Life Sciences, and Chemical and Safety will provide applications and solutions for all types of laboratories, said Anucha Parnpichate, the project manager of VNU Exhibitions Asia Pacific, the organiser.

More than 1,300 brands belonging to 350 exhibitors from 35 countries, including China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the United States and the United Kingdom, will present their latest laboratory technologies, he said.

Several seminars will be held on the sidelines to brief professionals in the industry on the latest information and technologies and enhance cooperation.

Last year the exhibition received more than 8,240 visitors, Anucha said, adding that Vietnam ranked second in terms of international visitors after Malaysia.

The figure is expected to be higher this year, he added.

Together with tourism stakeholders, representatives from training and educational institutions, certification boards and organisations, government ministers and senior officials from Aseancountries are slated to launch the Mutual Recognition Arrangement for Tourism Professionals (MRA-TP) at an international conference in Jakarta on August 8 and 9.

The conference, which is being organised by Indonesian Tourism Ministry, will set standardisation and benchmarking of skills for 32 hospitality and tourism job profiles, requiring 52 qualifications for such positions as front office, housekeeping, food and beverage services, tour operations, food production and travel agencies.

To help workers achieve the qualifications, 242 training “toolboxes” will also be created, accompanied by trainers and skill assessors alongside its registration system.

“The fulfilment of the MRA-TP initiative will boost the quality of services, as it will create a mobile, trained and confident workforce suited to travel industry needs,” Indonesian Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said in a press release.

Aside from aiming to increase the standard levels of the industry, the conference will encourage mobility among tourism and hospitality professionals to work in other countries across Asean.

The lower basin of the trans-boundary Mekong River starts from Laos and runs through Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the East Sea (South China Sea). Any attempts to interrupt the natural status of the river would pose risks to Vietnam’s Cuu Long (Mekong) delta where more than 17 million people rely on the river for a living.

Apart from the biggest threat coming from a string of major hydroelectric projects and dams along the Mekong river, such interruptions now even include new irrigation systems in the other three lower Mekong nations. They would drain more water from the river to support their growing agricultural sector and leave less water for Vietnam, said Nguyen Nhan Quang, an independent researcher on river basin management at a workshop held by local non-profit organisation PanNature on Tuesday.

In its economic development master plans with vision to 2027, Thailand – one of the four lowerMekong nations – was aiming to transform its northeast region where the Mekong river runs to a food growing and bio-fuel producing centre of the nation, Quang said.

“Therefore, new constructions and renovations to the irrigation system draining water from theMekong River (in Thailand) are just a matter of time,” he said.

“Thailand is planning some 990 irrigation projects most of which are to pump water out of the Mekong”.

Cambodia and Laos are also on their way to expand their farming land to grow rice and industrial crops. Quang said that Cambodia would add some 6,000 ha to the current 504,245 ha while Laos is planning a massive 238,617 ha of new agricultural land plus the existing 166,476 ha.

“Cuu Long delta is under tremendous strain when the water level will go down and down gradually,” Quang said.

Nguyen Hong Toan, a member of the Vietnam’s Mekong River Commission, said at the workshop that Mekong water redirection was not new but had been initiated since 1960. “Yet it was not until 2014 that Thailand and Cambodia redirected the river water on a larger scale,” he said.

Thailand by now is working on a project to irrigate Mekong river water through Nong Han district in Udon Thani province to Lam Pao dam. The dam reservoir would be expanded to about 45 sq kilometres to hold water in addition to another new 30 reservoirs to be built. The water volume in and out annually would reach about 2.8 billion cubic metres, according to Quang.

Cambodia, meanwhile, is building the $200 million (Bt6.9 billion) Vaico irrigation channels that link the Mekong River to the Krapik lake whose water volume is about 100 cubic metres.

“The construction of hydroelectric dams has caused so many difficulties for the Cuu Long delta already. But now, hydroelectric combining with water redirection is very dangerous for our country, especially when we are at a disadvantaged geographical location like this,” Toan said.

“About 95 per cent of the water flow into the Cuu Long delta comes from outside the country.

“If the water level is down, the delta will have to face even more serious drought and salinisation than ever before.”

The signing of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the high-speed rail to connect Singapore and Kuala Lumpur is a concrete step forward in a journey that began three years ago.

That was when Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak agreed on the project, which had been mooted many years earlier.

Although not legally binding, the MoU does represent a template of measured and reciprocal expectations.

It attests to the mutual interest that the two countries have in what could prove to be a game changer in their bilateral relations.

Transformative

Whether or not this timetable is kept, there is little to detract from the transformative vision embodied in the introduction of a rail service that would connect the two cities in 90 minutes, compared with four hours by road.

Given that road travel can take much longer when traffic jams are factored in, a fast train service would incentivise commuters with the time savings while remaining competitive with budget air fares.

Pricing will be a key issue.

It cannot be so high as to turn off all but business travellers.

But it cannot fall so low as to affect the profitability of the train operators, whose financial bottom lines will decide the viability of the project.

Costly

A firm commitment on both sides will be needed to see the project through. Expected to cost more than S$17 billion (Bt438 billion), it would represent a substantial investment at a time when global economic trends are not propitious. With only 15 kilometres of the nearly 400km line running through Singapore, most of the track will lie in Malaysia.

However, in terms of cost, Singapore might have to spend as much on its stretch of the railway as Malaysia does on its side because of the cost of building underground in Singapore.

Malaysian officials recognise these realities.

It is to be hoped that disruptive political voices do not intrude into calm and rational bilateral negotiations on how to split costs and ensure an equitable and effective way of running operations.

Given the unprecedented nature of the rail link, problems are bound to surface, but the initiative should not be held hostage by politics.

If pressures that arise later lead to demands for more intervening stops or other encumbrances, commuters might choose alternative travel modes that are less cumbersome and more affordable to them .

Instead, citizens on both sides of the Causeway should look upon the project as an iconic possibility. Connectivity is a buzzword, not least in the lexicon of Asean integration. Singapore and Malaysia could prove that faster and better transport links would transform Southeast Asia into a regional community that works well together.