Concreted traffic roads at Luong village, Tan Lap commune, Luc Ngan district.

The problems need resolving

In recent years, the party committees and governments at all levels, the provincial Fatherland Front and socio-political unions have provided a number of ethnic minority policies especially policies on infrastructure investment, production development, social security and job issues. 

Thus, there have been dramatic changes in socio-economic development in these areas. Some localities, which are home to a large number of ethnic minority people, have established concentrated agricultural and forestry production areas generating comparatively high incomes.

The models of cattle feeding at Phong Minh and Phong Van communes, Luc Ngan district, goat raising at the communes of Huyen Son and Bao Son in Luc Nam district, Thanh Hai and Nghia Ho in Luc Ngan district, Canh Nau and Dong Vuong communes in Yen The district and fruit growing at many communes of Luc Ngan and Son Dong districts are good examples.

However, people of ethnic minority groups are facing enormous difficulties. The minorities account for 35.96 percent of the poor in the province with 15,000 poor households.

The above problem results from inadequate infrastructure in these areas especially traffic and irrigation systems. Particularly in mountainous and high areas, 148 low-water bridges, lakes and dams have been deteriorated and damaged that need fixing and improved. Besides, more than 60 percent of channel systems have not been concreted causing difficulties for local people in production and trading.

The quality of human resources in ethnic minority areas is low at both physical and mental strength while awareness and working skills of local officials and people are limited. Especially, due to language barriers and limited accession to information, a number of ethnic minority areas remain some old habits and customs while local people are close-minded that hinder the common development.

Varieties of solutions

People at Dong Ha village, Yen Dinh commune, Son Dong district use clean water.

In recent years, the Vietnamese Party and State have offered many incentive policies to support the minorities in life settlement and production development. Hence, in order to surmount the problems, the local governments and competent agencies need to implement integrated solutions to make effective use of the funding resources from the Central and provincial support programs and projects.

Particularly, it is necessary to mobilize resources and utilize funds for construction of socio-economic infrastructure. At first, it is essential to allocate financial resources for especially difficult villages to build low-water bridges, roads and bridges over the streams facilitating traffic and production of the local people. All the below 5-billion VND (215,000 USD) construction works benefiting the program 135 will strictly follow the special construction mechanism.

Besides, the districts should provide more training courses to improve the cultural standard, management and leadership competence of the officials working in ethnic minority areas. It is necessary to eradicate the depraved customs in line with preserving and developing tangible and intangible cultural values of the ethnic minority groups.

It requires more active involvement of the provincial agencies and sectors in the sustainable socio-economic development of the ethnic minority areas. Accordingly, it is necessary to call the officials and members of the unions to join hand in helping the minorities with funding resources, science and technology for production and cultivation and family issues.

Nguyen Hong Luan