Nearly 200 youngsters across the country on May 28 departed from the Cat Lai port in Ho Chi Minh City for Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago as part of the “Youth Journey for National Sea and Islands” programme.

The 10-day trip has been launched by the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union and Vietnam’s Naval High Command.

The participants are scheduled to visit a number of islands in Truong Sa archipelago and the platform DK1, an important economics-science-service complex helping defend the country’s sovereignty over its islands, seas and continental shelf over the past 24 years.

Secretary of the union Nguyen Luong Hai highlighted the programme, now in its sixth year, as a practical means of demonstrating the teenagers’ patriotism and strong determination to defend the nation’s territorial integrity and marine sovereignty.-VNA