Le Trong Hao, an employee in Bargook Forest Protection Station (Chu Mom Ray National Park in Sa Son Commune of Sa Thay District in Kon Tum Province), shared that he usually travels 10km per day fulfilling his work duty. This has been recorded via an app installed on his smartphone.
“The smart device with this app is mandatory to us when patrolling the assigned forest area. It is quite user-friendly and is excellent evidence of what we have done”, said Hao. For the past two years using this app, at peak time, he did travel 300km for his duty compared with the normal requirement of 150km to be classified as ‘Job done’.
Head of Bargook Forest Protection Station Le Van Nghia informed that the six members in his station often cover a distance of 240 – 360km per month to perform their duty. This app prevents them from making false reports for others or asking their colleagues to patrol on their behalf. The patrol results are one criterion for performance evaluation.
Director Dao Xuan Thuy of Chu Mom Ray National Park said that this useful app has been in use since 2022. To better suit the real situation, the app had its data adjusted so that it can record images at the end of each patrol route as proof.
The evasion of duty has clearly reduced thanks to the implementation of this app, making performance evaluations more honest and objective.
More importantly, the images taken by forest rangers at different locations in the assigned forest areas help the forest managers have a more exact view of the current forest ecosystem status in order to adopt suitable management measures for more effective forest protection.
Director Thuy added that besides the app, his organization has used drones and camera trapping technologies on mini-cameras installed in different locations for forest control at a high altitude. Thanks to these advanced technologies, even with a shortage of human resources, for the past four years, there have been no cases of violating forestry laws or wildfires, which greatly contributes to maintaining the greenness of the forests.
